@nest0r - Interesting article. "Confabulation" - never heard of it before. Maybe I'll check it out more for PSY class. Frontal lobe damage is some crazy shit!

@radical_tyro and bombpersons
When you're awake re-imagine the dream as vividly as you can, but this time you go "no way, that's my old dog so-and-so, he died 10 years ago...THIS IS A DREAM!". That's one you can do right when you wake up, and with you're dream signs, if something reminds you or there is a similar phenomena during the day. I compiled a list, and right before going to sleep contemplated it and told myself that if these signs occurred, I would realize it and be lucid. It's self programming.

WILD is tricky. I've had some success with it, but it's not easy for me. It takes mad patience, but if you can get it to work it's pretty awesome. Have you tried the wake up extra early and go back to sleep an hour or two later trick? This can work great for WILD, and LD in general, especially if you visualize becoming lucid and instill in your mind a strong intention to LD during the sleep brake.

LD is tricky because it is a lot about intention and mental training of the WILL. In LaBerge's book there are actually exercises to strengthen will power. From his book  -

"As with other organs and functions of our bodies and minds, the will can be strengthened by exercise. To specifically strengthen a particular muscle group, we employ exercises aimed at exercising just that group. In strengthening the will, likewise, it is useful to train the will in isolation from other psychological functions. This can be done by performing "useless" exercises."

Exercises:

Calmly, patiently, slowly pick up 50 paper clips one by one and move them from one box to another.

Stand on a chair for five minuets and try to be completely content.

Repeat quietly, but aloud: "I will do this," while beating time for five minuets.

Get up and down from a chair thirty times.

Resist completely the urge to complain for an entire day.

Writ 100 times, "I will write a useless exercise."

Find a poem you like, about 20 lines, or 200 words long, and memorize it.

Say hello to five people to whom you've never before spoken.

Walk back in forth in a room, touching in turn a certain object (say, a vase on one side, a window on the other) for five minutes.

"1. Start with one task. Focus on the task and your feelings as you perform it. Try to maintain a calm state of mind, free from impatience or speculation about results of the exercise. When you are done, take notes on the thoughts and feelings you experience. If you succeeded in completing the task, the next day go on to step 2. If you failed to finish or do the task, try again with the same task the next day.

2. Add another task - Select another task and perform both it and and the one you did on day one on the same day, and with the same process (placid mind, notes after). Do this for two days (or until successfully completed on two days).

3. Add a third task. Do all three tasks for two days.

4. Drop an old one and pick up a new one, so that you still have three tasks. Do for two more days - continue taking notes.

5. Experiment on your own. Continue the exercise under your own direction. You can make up your own tasks, and add as many as you like to your daily regime. Don't give yourself too many though or you might get discouraged. Remember, try to feel contented as you perform the tasks-don't feel impatient or eager for reward."

LOL - I was just going to give a few examples, but I ended up throwing in the whole thing. This is from an Appendix in "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming." There is more in the book about strengthening will and concentration and visualization. Imop very useful for LD (and most anything else too).

I have not tried this fully myself (poor will power-I should just do it), but have experimented with it a little. It's actually kind of fun (in a bizarre way) , and I think it probably works.

Last edited by TaylorSan (2009 November 24, 10:46 am)

IceCream wrote:

if only ruiner had been there to teach him how to have better control over himself...

Haha.

Last edited by ruiner (2009 November 24, 7:23 pm)

wildweathel wrote:

Different state of consciousness.  Night terrors start before REM sleep, so you can't really become lucid during one.

Well apparently he was dreaming that he was attacking an intruder while strangling her, so I'm trying to find out what kind of research they did on what wires got crossed. Till then I'll assume this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REM_Sleep_ … r_Disorder

Last edited by ruiner (2009 November 24, 3:23 pm)

Whoa interesting article. I learned a little about that in class. I'm grateful I don't have that - I was on a killing spree in my dream last night (like living the movie road warrior - FUBAR).

This article was on that site and caught my attention as well -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/no … a-23-years

Last edited by TaylorSan (2009 November 24, 8:13 pm)

Anyway, this was fun, I delete this stuff because I'm weird about exchanges vs. broadcasts, but we had some good exchanges before deletion, that's all that matters to me.  ;p

Last edited by ruiner (2009 November 25, 7:28 pm)

The plot thickens: http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swi … -stop.html - James Randi on the previously linked man in a coma as being a hoax via facilitated communication...

Didn't realize it was such an ambiguous story. I just skimmed for the cool quote about 'pure consciousness', trying to avoid the usual coma/euthanasia rhetoric. But this 'FC' trick is even more interesting than poetic quotes.

Last edited by nest0r (2009 November 25, 11:47 pm)

I had my first lucid dream last night, after about two weeks of journaling. I was in my apartment and my girlfriend was upset about something I said, so I apologized to her and she got more upset and was acting really unreasonable. I thought... this doesn't seem like her at all, wait, this is a dream!

Then I had this feeling like I kind of rose out of my body- first I looked at my hands to try and focus, then I spun. I ended up outside with a midnight blue sky and a big blue planet, so I decided to fly to it- I made a flying sound and off I went, but then it lost depth and looked more like wallpaper. I didn't really have a sensation of flying either. So I decided to spin again while telling myself I'm dreaming- this time I spun faster and the detail of the dream really improved. However I ended up in a mystery/thriller type setting where it was really dark with only one light. This freaked me out and a I had a false awakening- decided to test if I was still dreaming and realize I was, and saw a scary old lady and really woke up, lol.

I forgot to touch anything or rub my hands together, so I didn't have any sensation of feeling, even when I was spinning- it was basically just visual. Pretty happy though, as today is my birthday I was so excited I couldn't go back to sleep for another hour, so I decided to get up and write the dream down at 4am.

Thanks! Yeah pretty psyched- I kept telling myself when I see people that don't live in Japan I'm dreaming, but that hasn't clued me in yet. Turned out having my girlfriend act completely out of character was the ticket.

I'm also sick and wasn't sleeping well last night- up for about half an hour at 2am and figured I had a good chance of going lucid since I was mentally quite awake. Woke from my lucid at 4am, wrote it down and couldn't get back to bed till after 5am. Pretty knackered today...

Kind of amazing to go from remembering dreams occasionally to remembering 2-5 a night- to the point where I don't want to bother recording them all!

Weird, I had a lucid dream last night as well. Well, I always have lucid dreams, but this was a 'meta' lucid dream, where I went into and controlled other dream-characters' dreams! Then I interacted with them when they woke up. I don't have a clawed glove and a striped sweater, I swear it.

Any progress anyone? I had an actual lucid dream last night, but it was pretty short. I wasn't sure what to do with my new found freedom ^_^;

Last night I was reading a book about lucid dreaming, and I was thinking that sometimes I have dreams of reuniting with a long lost friend. But those dreams are pretty infrequent and I decided unreliable to test if I'm lucid or not... well that night I had one of those dreams! Probably not just a coincidence. Anyway, towards the natural end of the dream, when I clued in and asked myself whether I had really got in touch with my old friend, I realized it was a dream and a chance for a lucid dream. I tried the spinning technique to change the setting, and it was replaced with random colours... so I flew around a bit until I woke up.

Before my lucid dream I seemed to wake up every 3 hours or so, and each time I was able to remember the dreams I'd had(short term).

I want to try this idea for 'training' for lucid dreams. Think up some real dreams that you remember, go through each one in your head, and at some point simulate having a lucid dream. Since they were real dreams maybe the brain will recognise this and increase the chances on having a lucid dream.

Maybe you've desensitized yourself to the spinning/hand rubbing technique?

Unfortunately you could be having the craziest dream ever, and not realize that you're dreaming. They just seem to be programmed that way.

The book I was reading was talking about how not being able to remember dreams may have been an adaptation to basically prevent confusing the real world and the dream world(except that people can remember their dreams, and we can't prove that animals can't). But for me, mundane real life events are being confused with equally mundane realistic dream events. For example, during the day I might recall, "oh yeah, I found one of my cat's toys the other day... wait a minute, no I didn't. That was a dream... I think."
And one time my sister and I were leaving the house, and I had a sense of deja vu. I told my sister, "I had a dream that the blinds fell down from the window one time when we were leaving the house." And she told me that that had actually happened, she had apparently just fixed the blinds when I was unaware -_-;;

I've had a few since my first, but they only lasted at most 20 seconds. Whenever I get lucid everything tends to fade away very quickly. I tried using the rubbing hands technique, but I still woke up

Even though I haven;t had that many lucid dreams, it's great being able to remember dreams so well now. I used to only very occasionally remember dreams, and even then they were very vague, but now they are much more vivid and I can remember a lot of detail. Just remembering all those weird things is fun by itself