Let's ask bodhisamaya, I think he has an experience with Dream Yoga, a similar practice to LD.

When you are in an environment where you have all the powers of a god, do you really want to study Japanese?

Last edited by bodhisamaya (2009 November 13, 2:32 pm)

If you want to try it, I recommend you to use the WBTB method along with MILD.

Last edited by ahibba (2009 November 13, 2:08 pm)

bodhisamaya wrote:

When you are in an environment where you all the powers of a god, do you really want to study Japanese?

That's what I was going to say -- if the best you can come up with for a lucid dream is to study Japanese, you need to get out more

Lucid Dreaming is one of the Yogas of Naropa in Tibetan Buddhism and a requirement for becoming a teacher (Lama).  The lamas practice it in their 40 month training by sleeping while sitting in meditation posture all night (well, the four hours they are allowed to sleep anyways).   I have practiced it a little, but never accomplished the goal of using it for spiritual development.  I just get caught up in distractions like flying and sex.

@angerman - What you describe makes me think of "OBE", out of body experience. I may be wrong here, but that sounds like the early stage of inducing OBE. I have not tried this or experimented with it (yet). But I think it is a fascinating practice. I am reading the book "My Big T.O.E." by Thomas Campbell, a physicist who did many experiments with out of body travel. There is information out there that can teach you all about it.

ruiner wrote:

As for the dream journal, the underlying mechanism I think is the 'desire' and 'awareness' you're cultivating, and it's less about the words, in my opinion, than simply engaging and reliving the dreams when waking until they're situated in their proper context. You must get in touch with your homunculus! hehe

That sounds about right. Actually, I went though a period of not having dreams worth writing down, and came out of it with the ability to remember the rare good dream fully(well, more or less) until I got up and could right it down properly.  Since I'm not worried about writing it down immediately, my "writing dreams inside dreams" problem has faded. Instead, I review my dream inside my dream...more productive and less frustrating.

angerman wrote:

if you go to bed, laying on your back, don't move and try to think about nothing, (imagine being in a black box, completely light-less works) after some time you should be able to feel loosing your feeling about body parts. If you move, you'll get feeling again. Feeling should die off from your extremities towards your head...

After that you will either fall asleep or feel vibrations pulsating through your body. If you managed to keep yourself calm physically and mentally, you will end up floating out of your body (OBE) but this has nothing to do with LD.

Well, while we're just throwing stuff out there...

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/ … cinations/

Since I was a child I am able to remember most of my dreams and I had sometimes lucid dreams without knowing about the term. After founding some information about "lucid dreaming" in the internet I tried successfully to induce more lucid dreams. But to be honest, I don't think it is that great. After some while lucid dreams got more boring than normal dreams.
Walking around, knowing that is just a dreams spoils alot of fun. It is like playing a game with cheats.. godmode as it makes you some sort of god. But when you realize its just a dream, then you realize everything is not real.... its just your imagination. That makes you a god in an empty world.. or an world that is just "you" (sometimes i compare it with daydreaming). People are only empty "hulls", you control them like puppets on a string. There is no need to be afraid or to show any emotions. And by having a very clear mind, you deactivate all the random craziness which makes dreams so different and interesting. Besides empty "living objects" you can play with the surrounding, create new worlds as you like, which I found really difficult and it didn't worked out most of the time and. Interactions with "living objects" are more important to me in dreams anyway.

Many people want to have lucid dreams to "learn" flying but technically you can fly in normal dreams, too. Its more a problem of your imagination, if you need lucid dreams to try out new things. I have to admit, that lucid dreaming was helpfully to add some "new" abilities to my normal repertoire, but it hasn't much use after that. Take for example 'phasing', the ability to go through solid matter like walls. You can use it for your tactical advantage, to hide from people, get access to different areas or surprise people just for fun. Nothing of this makes really sense if you are lucid dreaming. You can't surprise people which don't exist (as you  know) and even if the are surprised you know its just some act, triggered by your expectations. You don't need to hide from things which aren't real... and so on.
More interesting are some sort of "half" lucid dreams (that is what most people claim as lucid dreaming too) where you know that it is a dream but without really realizing all the consequences. But I gave up lucid dreaming after a while as I want to be entertained in the night... with the whole range of emotions, with tragedies, action, killing suspense and many new crazy ideas.

thorstenu wrote:

...godmode as it makes you some sort of god. But when you realize its just a dream, then you realize everything is not real.... its just your imagination. That makes you a god in an empty world.. or an world that is just "you".

Very close to the realization that is supposed to be achieved in Dream Yoga when one compares normal waking life to the  Dream world where the senses and sense objects don't actually exist.  The other beings and the environment seem to be separate from you in this dream world as well, but they are all you.

yukamina wrote:

It's about control. I can't just wait for the dream I want to happen. Chances are, I'm never going to have a flying dream unless I can take control and make it happen.
I find it odd that you lose motivation completely just because dreams aren't "real". They're still enjoyable...

As i said,  I dreamed a lot in my life. And the concpet of flying is not new... not in the real world nor was it new in my dreams. Normally, you think of things.. care about things and then they appear in your dreams. As the media like movies and computer (games and classic books, too) provided me with thousands of things to dream about I dreamed about thousand things and I wasn't able to think about something new , when I was in control (or before that). Its more, that the normal dream with its crazy randomness is able to provide me with new ideas and concepts.
About flying, I learned a new technique through lucid dreaming but as I was flying before it didn't made a great differences.

yukamina wrote:

What, do your dreams take the format of a video game? These situations never happen in my dreams, and often I'm not in my dreams.

Yeah, you could say they do... or like movies. The phasing was just an example, because its really cool and helpful. But I am surprised that you have a lot of dreams without some sort of self. I know this only from dreams when I am sick.

bodhisamaya wrote:

Very close to the realization that is supposed to be achieved in Dream Yoga when one compares normal waking life to the  Dream world where the senses and sense objects don't actually exist.  The other beings and the environment seem to be separate from you in this dream world as well, but they are all you.

Interesting..  so that makes my experience a spiritual one after all?

@IceCream
I am glad you understand what I meant. I had some of my most extreme feelings in dreams  and I am glad I had them but I wish that those (somehow extreme) situations never happen in my real life.

Last edited by thorstenu (2009 November 13, 6:05 pm)