Kate, let me correct one error I may have propogated, and not for the first time. What I mean to say is that OBE's are dreams, but not necessarily lucid dreams. They can be called WILDs if they occur from the waking state AND the person knows he or she is dreaming. Before I ever heard of lucid dreaming I had experiences where I believed I was separating from my body--OBEs. Now that I know that these are dreams, I call them WILDs, but the experience is in all other respects the same now as then.
Did I confuse things even more?
Paul
Ben, please tell me a little bit about how you go about inducing your WILDs. I'm really interested to learn other techniques.
SDs, Paul
Paul, currently I have been working on the 61 point exercize to induce WILDS. It seems to work best for me if I do it really slowly and without focusing too much on the 61 points. I try to let my mind wander at the same time because this helps my body shut down and become paralyzed. It takes a very careful balance between staying alert and drifting off. I have had the most success with this when I wake up in the middle of the night and have very strong intent to have an ld.
Ben
Ben, thanks for your reply. I used to practice the 61 point exercise daily as a meditation, but I would compulsively focus so intently on each point I always remained wide awake. I've never tried it in sleepy mode to induce WILDs. I am definitely going to give it another try. Much appreciation.
Paul
Well, I had a WILD last night that was, for me, the finest LD yet. I had been having some powerful dreams all night. About 4 am I began to awaken from one, where I was sailing a tall ship up a river and singing the praises of our illustrious captain, and became aware of my true state as I woke up. My NovaDreamer was flashing for all its worth, also.
I immediately allowed myself to return to REM sleep, complete with vibrations. I also heard myriad voices just on the other side of that grayish veil that I often see before the dream develops. I didn't want to wake up, which sometimes happens at this point, so I relaxed as much as possible and didn't push. Then, pop, and I was at a huge party. I knew it was a dream. I mingled.
This LD went on for ages, so long in fact that I can only remember pieces of it from its beginning and end. I'm thinking an LD can be TOO long, from the standpoint of remembering it. Even as I was eventually waking up, I could feel it slipping away.
But the part I wanted to share was near the end. I never lost lucidity, but wishing to return home, wherever that was, I knew I had to enter a river and let the current carry me. I was about to do that when I noticed that I was on a balcony nearly 200 feet above the river, and would have to jump.
This is the cool part. The scenery seemed so real to me by that time and the dream was so long that I began to ask myself, "You sure this is a dream?" I began to wonder if I wasn't fooling myself. If this wasn't a dream I was going to die for sure. I needed a reality check real bad. No writing or digital clocks were around, and, Gordon, I forgot to look for my nose. So, like a true intrepid oneironaut, I thought, "Go for it! You'll know if it's real or not in a hurry." Over the rail I went--but backwards, so I wouldn't have to look. I plunged into the river, sank about 20 feet, opened my eyes. I was alive and therefore still dreaming. Everything had a dull brown cast to it, like in muddy water. I decided to take a breath, the ultimate test!. I inhaled, and the whole brown film came away from the scenery and entered my mouth and airways, like inhaling a sheet of tissue paper. What was left was a clear, shining scene of underwater crystalline beauty--indescribable!!
There was much more to the dream, but this part was just amazing.
Can LDs be too long, do you think? Should we wake ourselves sooner so we can remember more? Does lucidity fade if the dream is too long?
I'm really grateful to have this forum to post these things. Nobody else wants to hear it!
Paul
Nice Dreams Paul.. Do you think [ND] played a big part in them? I entered a lucid dream once while using nova dreamer. ND woke me and as I returned to sleep then the wild hit me.. I want to share two very vivid dreamsI had last night.. These dreams were giving me the strongest hints in a while to become lucid..There was much more to this dream but I remember many diferent plants running up and down the side of a big green hill.. The plants all had faces and little feet and hands as they scurried all over the hillside digging holes every where like they had lost something.. That Is not normal in the wakeing world!! Where was my awareness???? A small bit of [dream two] involved a auto parts store that sat about 4 foot off the ground and had wheels under it and a windsheild stearing wheel and drivers seat so it could be moved from parking lot to parking lot..I went in to this store and comented to the manager ...Man this place is strange!And then with a chuckle I also said... at least you have got mobility! NOW who ever saw an autoparts store that can be driven around town? I think I was halfway to [awareness] when I said..[Man this place is strange] But the rest of my response I seemed to make a joke out of it.... halfway acepting it as real? If I would have questioned the reality of these ocurences I would have been aware I was dreaming and became lucid..Where did I go wrong and miss these strong hints? I would rather become lucid without any devices If posable.. My [theory] is that some of us have an underlying [desire or mental block] to see our dreams as reality.. Can this block be present without our full awareness?. If It is present that may explain why some of us incounter very imposable ocurences in our dreams that should tip us off that we are dreaming...But I treated the ocurence with a halfway a critical and a halfway accepting attitude...It seems to me that when I noticed that mobile autoparts store as strange or unusual I should have been able to take my critical thought farther! And the first dream with all the little plants running around and digging holes in a hillside was [totaly imposable] in the wakeing world!But I only remember observing this scene.So what can cause our sleeping and awake minds to react this way? To enter a lucid dream this way by noticing some imposable event unfolding as a DREAM and becoming aware..Is this method called [DILD] method?Yes..no? Does anyone have any opinions on these subjects? keep dreaming..Tom..
Tom, the fact is that everyone, even lucid dreamers when not lucid, believe that their dreams are real while they are dreaming. It's our natural state. I don't think of it as a block. And I don't buy the concept of critical awareness.
Our brains have the task of modelling the world for us so we can survive in it. A natural correlate of this fact is that we come to rely on these models, to believe what our minds tell or show us. How could it be otherwise? It's not that we're less aware when dreaming, or dumber, or less attentive, in my opinion.
From the point of view of our waking mind, a man with four eyes seems an obvious dreamsign. Why don't we recognize it? Well, suppose you saw a four-eyed man while awake. What would you do? Deny that you saw it? Pinch yourself? Sorry, you still see it. Now what? You could accept some farcical explanation--someone slipped me some acid!-- Otherwise, what choice do you have but to accept that it's there. We must accept the evidence of our own eyes in everyday life, right? So we finally perhaps have to adjust our world view to allow for the possibility of mutants among us. (If you were a New Yorker you probably wouldn't even notice!)
I think this is also true in dreams. There you are, your mind modelling the world the best it can, when a four-eyed man appears. Ok, there it is. No denying it. What else can you do but believe that it's real(unless you are an oneironaut and have trained yourself to recognize this particular wierdness as a dreamsign)? Remember, you don't know that you are asleep!
You want to know why you don't immediately recognize the oddness of this, as you do when awake. Well, maybe you do recognize it as odd in the dream, or maybe you don't, but whether you do or don't, unless you have trained yourself otherwise the natural thing is to accept what you see as real. There's no denying its reality for you.
The beatiful aspect of all this is that we can learn to recognize these features of our dreams, but it takes some work and some patience to go against our NATURAL state of accepting what our brains show us as real.
Bottom line: We don't need to be frustrated just because we do what comes naturally
Paul
I had a fairly brief WILD this morning after a series of nonlucid dreams. As per usual I awoke in a sleepy state, eyes closed, still sort of REMing away, and waited for those wonderful vibrations. Sure enough they came and after a few moments they lifted me right out of myself. I knew I was outdoors, and told myself, "I'm dreaming", but couldn't clear my vision. I had the feeling of motion, but couldn't see any scenery. I rubbed my dreams eyes--no help. I thought, "This is a dream, I should be able to make myself see." I got annoyed. Then I woke up. There was no time to go back and try again, my alarm was about to go off.
Maybe I knew it was nearly time to get up while in the LD, and that's why the dream never fully developed. No sense getting all dressed up if there's nowhere to go, or no time to go there!
Paul
Hi, all!
This morning, after a brief awakening, I returned to sleep, and sometime in the next 30 minutes had a dream. At first I wasn't sure it was a dream. I believed I was lying in bed on the verge of waking up. Of course I was already deep in dreamland. I thought to myself: This feels like a dream--if so, I can fly. Sure enough, I took off, passed through the wall, and went on to explore a black hole in space, which I had previously set as a task. I've lately been into modern physics and cosmology.
Here's what I discovered. Black holes:
- are black,
- spin,
- accelarate you to unbelievable speeds,
- tear you limb from limb, and
- go "thwunk" when you hit the bottom.
Isn't it interesting that except for number 5, this is exactly what I have read in my sundry books on popular cosmology! Imagine that!
Paul
Hello everyone,
April 28
Well I went back to bed after finishing recording the lucid dreams from a couple of days ago.
And this time I had a couple of WILD's
There was an expeirence several time that felt as if I were being taken out of the body; as if someone were pulling at my feet and taking me out like a foot being pulled out of a sock. This happened two or three times I felt that whoever or whatever was pulling me out was having fun with just tossing me about. Couldn't see who it was.
Then there was the sense of spinning that so often occurs but this time being quite lucid I decided to see how fast I could spin and suddenly I was in some kind of vortex like a hurricane and was watching ice crystals form and break because of the high winds. It might not have been wind at all it may have been some kind of energy flux and the seeming ice crystals some process whereby energy becomes matter.
(All this was written before I saw Paul's post.
Paul I find the similarity of your dream and mind very interesting. Have been posting to the mutual lucidity shared dream site.
We didn't dream it on the same night but they do seem perhaps more that co-incidental
There was more...)
and in the midst of this there was something in the vortex with me, that playfully tapped me a couple of times, darned if it doesn't seem to me now as if it were some kind of human sized fariy creature brushing it's wings against me as I was spinning so fast. I could make out it's face somewhat, humanoid with eyelids that were not Asian exactly, but definitely not caucasian either. It must have been circling with me to get a good look, and perhaps so I could see IT.
(This is another insert as I've been checking spelling. It may have been the same creature that was felt pulling me out of my body. Could not see it because it's normally invisible. Only saw it in the vortex because of the terrific speed of the force in it, so that what I was seeing was not so much the actual entity but the visible pariticles flowing around it's invisible form, kind of like the way they look at particle trajectories in a cloud chamber. Where they "see" particles that are invisible except for the trails they leave behind, in the fog like gas of the chamber. That explains why there were so many lines in the form, like a low resolution television picture.)
That might explain why it brushed up against me a couple of times since I can't really guess how fast I'd gotten myself spinning, all that I can say it that I put "the petal to the metal" mentally so it was very fast. So if it was trying to "catch up with me" that is match my rotation speed which it pretty much did then well, what kind of being would or could even attempt such a feat?
Whatever it was there was a sense that it was amused by my lying in the air just spinning like crazy. And perhaps it's not something it sees every day.
Of course I'm talking like it's a separate entity, it sure felt like it but... oh well, some people say the entire universe is a projection.
This, it is being discovered, was a really wild WILD!
Regards,
Daniel
Luck and Lucidity
Daniel
Daniel
I feel so lucky. I started having sleep paralysis at the age of 14, it was a damn scary and crazy experience and went on sometimes daily for years. I have had it easily over 1000 times. It faded off as I got older and rarely happened. I knew it was basically me being caught between some sleep wake state. But until the age of 27 when I got online and did some research on lucid dreaming did I find the medical explanation of sleep paralysis which forever changed my life. I know many people that can't get past the fear during sleep paralysis no matter what they try. I was able to the first time I attempted and it showed me how powerful our minds our and how in control we are. After that I started having lucid dreams and then once in awhile when I would have sleep paralysis I would have an amazing experience and either OBE or have a lucid dream from that state.
In the last 3 months things have gotten a bit crazy. I started having sleep paralysis again on a regular basis. With me usually I will black out momentarily and then wake up in the paralysis state minutes later. Here is an account of one amazing experience if you're interested. http://www.dreamjournal.org/dj/index.cfm?do=getdream&dream_id=24417
Anyway in the last 3 months instead of blacking out and then being in the paralysis state, I started randomly falling asleep and remaining conscious. Of course when this happens the state you are in is actually sleep paralysis, you just are awake for the entire transition and it was very freaky the first time it happened, I honestly thought I was dying. Then I realized what had just occurred. In this state I can physically open my eyes, one night i opened them and saw a glowing green light pulsating from my chest. I had never done much studying on chakras but looked it up online after and was amazed at what I found and it explained what I saw. My heart chakra, fully open. Truly incredible.
Well in the last month i have started to try to will myself into that state rather then have it happen randomly. I was successful every single time i tried (assuming i didnt accidentally fall asleep first which has happened lol). I feel incredibly blessed that I am able to do this with such ease and really can't explain why. One of the things that lead me to create my website http://www.dreamjournal.net was obviously the experience I have had. Now I am actually going to be going back to school to study Cognative Science. Can't wait. Anyway just thought I'd share. Kelly