Some Thoughts on Personalizing Reality Checks/Dreamsigns
I had a lucid dream the other night where I recognized one of my dreamsigns--which in turn caused lucidity. Prior to this, "going lucid" has always been a hit or miss, spontaneous, thing. It got me thinking about some things I thought I'd pass on.
There for a while I'd been using Stephen LaBerge's weekly list of reality check items during the day ("next time you hear a telephone ring", "hear a dog barking", etc.). The results turned out to be consistently bad for me. When I scored myself at the end of the day I always got a big, red "F". I hardly ever remembered to do a check when any of the items occurred.
After a while I just gave it up--but I still felt that reality checks during the day were a good thing to do. When I looked over my dream journal a week or so ago, it dawned on me that none of the things on LaBerge's weekly list tend to enter into my dreams. Phones don't ring and dogs don't often start barking. It made me wonder that, even if I did score well on those reality check items, there was a damned good possibility I would never have an occasion to use them in a dream--simply because they most likely would never occur.
But I also noticed in my journal that there were things that appeared or occurred in my dreams that did tend to occur during the day. For example, dream figures tend to appear who are physically attractive, and I noticed that a certain amount of my daily aggravation tends to spill over into my dreams as well (driving, work situations).
So I decided I'd try getting more personal with my reality checks. The result? Voila--a much better score (B-pluses to A-pluses), and like I said above, it helped me in recognizing a dreamsign (not to raise any eyebrows, but the appearance of a very attractive dream figure of the opposite sex caused the other night's lucidity--bonus!).
I would also tend to say that the more personal the dreamsigns/reality checks, the better. For example, I have this strange quirk where certain, older architecture will give me this very strong, positive feeling about a happy period from my adolescence. I have no idea why this is, but I noticed that this was another theme in my dream journal. Just Last night I had a dream that an old friend of mine--from that period of my life--and I were walking around a town that had a lot of those kinds of buildings and houses. That feeling from my youth was really in the air in this dream--and, odd as this sounds--lucidity felt close. I'm surprised it didn't happen. So, more grist for the mill, so to speak.
By the way, just as a disclaimer, I'm not trying to put LaBerge or his technique down. I think his book is essential reading for anyone who wants to get into lucid dreaming.
intersting post and think you may be right in making the checks personal. I will give this a try
Peter
fineganswaker wrote: I had a lucid dream the other night where I recognized one of my dreamsigns--which in turn caused lucidity. Prior to this, "going lucid" has always been a hit or miss, spontaneous, thing. It got me thinking about some things I thought I'd pass on.
There for a while I'd been using Stephen LaBerge's weekly list of reality check items during the day ("next time you hear a telephone ring", "hear a dog barking", etc.). The results turned out to be consistently bad for me. When I scored myself at the end of the day I always got a big, red "F". I hardly ever remembered to do a check when any of the items occurred.
After a while I just gave it up--but I still felt that reality checks during the day were a good thing to do. When I looked over my dream journal a week or so ago, it dawned on me that none of the things on LaBerge's weekly list tend to enter into my dreams. Phones don't ring and dogs don't often start barking. It made me wonder that, even if I did score well on those reality check items, there was a damned good possibility I would never have an occasion to use them in a dream--simply because they most likely would never occur.
But I also noticed in my journal that there were things that appeared or occurred in my dreams that did tend to occur during the day. For example, dream figures tend to appear who are physically attractive, and I noticed that a certain amount of my daily aggravation tends to spill over into my dreams as well (driving, work situations).
So I decided I'd try getting more personal with my reality checks. The result? Voila--a much better score (B-pluses to A-pluses), and like I said above, it helped me in recognizing a dreamsign (not to raise any eyebrows, but the appearance of a very attractive dream figure of the opposite sex caused the other night's lucidity--bonus!).
I would also tend to say that the more personal the dreamsigns/reality checks, the better. For example, I have this strange quirk where certain, older architecture will give me this very strong, positive feeling about a happy period from my adolescence. I have no idea why this is, but I noticed that this was another theme in my dream journal. Just Last night I had a dream that an old friend of mine--from that period of my life--and I were walking around a town that had a lot of those kinds of buildings and houses. That feeling from my youth was really in the air in this dream--and, odd as this sounds--lucidity felt close. I'm surprised it didn't happen. So, more grist for the mill, so to speak.
By the way, just as a disclaimer, I'm not trying to put LaBerge or his technique down. I think his book is essential reading for anyone who wants to get into lucid dreaming.
I know what you're talking about, I lucid dream almost every night now and when I started I use to follow Steve's methods and rarely had any results. He is a genius though and has some great concepts. I filtered all methods and use one's that are the most effective and always gave me results. ALWAYS. So I made a webpage about it. I'm sure you already know this but. I teach people the number 1 thing to becoming lucid is to make sure you know how to repeatedly make yourself have vivid dreams. Everything else follows.
Thanks inkpoet for your response and insights. I'm starting to think more along the same lines (i.e, stripping things down to what works toward the actual goal of lucid dreaming).
I like your website. It's succinct and to the point, and you bring up a number of very good issues and questions about traditional LD techniques.
For example, I agree with you about dream journals. I like keeping one--but they only seem to be good for recalling regular, non-lucid dreams. There's this idea about possibly not being able to remember your lucid dreams unless you're good at dream recall in general--but I don't buy it. My reasoning might seem a little circular, but unless I'm just completely dead wrong, I remember clearly every lucid dream I've had since I started into this. To me lucid dreams are quite vivid and memorable--simply because you've become conscious in them. You've, in essence, become awake in your dream, so of course recall of them is going to be 100% better.
Another good point: this idea of lying on your back. I tend to like to start off that way (just because it's relaxing to me), but there seems to be some confusion out there. This seems to be a good position for OBEs or possibly the WILD method, but all of the recent LDs I've had have occurred after I've rolled over on my side, got even more comfortable, and just fell asleep naturally. I mean, if you like sleeping on your back, go for it; but if not, don't sweat rolling over!
And, yes, I've found that the WBTB method seems to be the best so far for me (I've heard that WILDs are the holy grail, but that's further down the road for me--I can't wrap my head around that technique at all). And yes too, I've found that I don't have to stay up for a huge amount of time like some LD writers recommend. Longer periods don't seem to affect the ability to lucid dream for me.
In an odd way, though, maybe your best piece of advice is your mentioning the "placebo" effect. I'm finding that there are certain nights (mornings actually) when, after a WBTB, I'm just stoked about having a lucid dream. It's hard to describe--it's as if I'm in a mental state where I just know it's going to happen. When I'm in this state, with this much positive "will to power" as it were, I find that lucid dreaming does indeed occur.
LaBerge is a genius at this, but one of the best things he says in his book is that all these techniques need to be tweaked for personal use--good advice, there...
PS: I tend to want to stay away from supplements and such--but I like the idea of the apple juice and will try it.
fineganswaker wrote:
For example, I agree with you about dream journals. I like keeping one--but they only seem to be good for recalling regular, non-lucid dreams. There's this idea about possibly not being able to remember your lucid dreams unless you're good at dream recall in general--but I don't buy it.
There is nothing to buy, it does indeed occur and it will happen to you. How many times have you said I need to remember this, and you forget, but you remember that you needed to remember! It will happen in lucidity too. My last one I distinctly remember being lucid but I cannot for the life of me remember what I did!
thanks for the link, I will give your site a good browse later in the day. Apple juice - I have had some good results using this and with some supplements as well. Dont use that often because of the intensity of the dreams but do so at times. I have not posted much on supplements as I feel the results are so strong that if you are new to LD you will not really get what is going on.
Peter
There is nothing to buy, it does indeed occur and it will happen to you. How many times have you said I need to remember this, and you forget, but you remember that you needed to remember! It will happen in lucidity too. My last one I distinctly remember being lucid but I cannot for the life of me remember what I did![/quote]
I wish I had that problem! :D But, yes, I think for a lucid dreamer who's as adept at it as you are there are going to be times--after you've been lucid dreaming so often and for so long--when it will be hard to remember each and every occurrence, scene and detail.
Back when you were working on your lucid dreaming techniques, did keeping a dream journal help you become more lucid more often--in other words, did it help fast track you to your goal of lucid dreaming more frequently? Also, would making a dream journal entry after that last lucid dream have helped you to remember it?
Please forgive me if it sounds as if I might be trying to bait you here--I'm not. I'm really interested in hearing more (much more) from an experienced lucid dreamer. I'm certainly not anti-dream journal, and this last week I feel like I'm on the cusp of becoming lucid much more often; but it also seems like that feeling could also slip away. Discussion really seem to help!
Keeping a dream journal started after I had my first Lucid Dream. But keeping a dream journal definitely helped me recall my dreams. I always get out of bed and type up my dream, even when I am still in a tired state. It is amazing how many dreams start coming back. I set my alarm for 15 minutes after the first alarm so I know to start getting ready for work. I literally close my eyes and just type. Typos + stopping does not help you keep the flow. There are dreams where you will note are different, lucid or not, and you'll know if you are supposed to make note of it. Do so, and then come back and write in what happened that day. Many times when a dream feels like just a dream, my day is as normal and routine as any other. but dreams with strong emotion almost always have a connection with something that will happen that day. At least for me that is what i have found. And i always note in the morning in the journal what it was.
It is crazy how much your desire and intent control your dreams and dream recall. For the last week I have been busy moving and not focused at all on dreaming, and just like that I can't remember my dreams. But I am not worried, when I get settled and refocus myself on my dreams they will come back. It will take a while to make remembering dreams second nature rather than a forced habit.
rdubya wrote: Keeping a dream journal started after I had my first Lucid Dream. But keeping a dream journal definitely helped me recall my dreams. I always get out of bed and type up my dream, even when I am still in a tired state. It is amazing how many dreams start coming back. I set my alarm for 15 minutes after the first alarm so I know to start getting ready for work. I literally close my eyes and just type. Typos + stopping does not help you keep the flow. There are dreams where you will note are different, lucid or not, and you'll know if you are supposed to make note of it. Do so, and then come back and write in what happened that day. Many times when a dream feels like just a dream, my day is as normal and routine as any other. but dreams with strong emotion almost always have a connection with something that will happen that day. At least for me that is what i have found. And i always note in the morning in the journal what it was.
It is crazy how much your desire and intent control your dreams and dream recall. For the last week I have been busy moving and not focused at all on dreaming, and just like that I can't remember my dreams. But I am not worried, when I get settled and refocus myself on my dreams they will come back. It will take a while to make remembering dreams second nature rather than a forced habit.
Thanks for the feedback, rdbuya. This is really interesting stuff. So, do you feel that sometimes your dreams--where you note that something seems different--is a form of pre-cognition? That something...(searching for the right words here)...sort of comes to pass the next day that you dreamed of? Of is it more like something you dreamed "colors" your day? Either way, I'd very much like to hear more about that--and I want to start paying attention to that in my own dreaming, lucid or not.
I really do agree with you about how the practice of keeping a dream journal helps bring things back--I absolutely agree with that. The other thing that happens to me is that I'll see insights into and connections between things that happen in the dreams. For example, while journaling one of my more recent lucid dreams (after earlier journaling a pre-WBTB dream), I realized that--thematically--my lucid dream was more or less the same one I'd had earlier. It was just being played out in a different way and in a lucid state. It also amazes me how much "post-cognition" happens to me--where stuff from my waking day get inside of my dreams. That used to seem obvious and a little pedestrian to me, but now I think that's a pretty fascinating phenomenon--and a possible aid to lucid dreaming.
And, yeah--it really amazes me how, if you get your mind off track--off "desire'--how much that affects what goes on nocturnally. I'm not in the process of moving, but lately I've been so exhausted by the end of my day ('round midnight), that I just want to go to bed and sleep! It's not that I don't want to lucid dream, but rather that I'm just not thinking about making sure I recall what I've dreamed upon waking, and then making sure I get up to record it (Unfortunately, I've developed a bit of an "Oh f*** it" attitude lately).
As a result, well, it's as if something in my subconscious has responded in a negative way as well--as if it couldn't care either, as if it says Fine then--don't lucid dream--don't recall!. I was hoping that maybe slacking off might even jolt an unexpected lucid dream at this point in my development (or maybe just a very vivid dream that I'd easily recall). But no dice. Nada. I get much better results if I'm stoked about my night.
So, if you don't my asking, how long have you been lucid dreaming? Also, were you lucid dreaming before you started investigating into working on LD techniques? And finally, how long did it take you personally to where remembering dreams became "second nature"?
Thanks in advance.
fineganswaker,
I am in the same boat lately with that attitude you mentioned! But I know the interest will come back around when it is ready to, I wouldn't worry about it too much, just focus on whatever has your interest at the moment!
I have been meditating for about 4 years now, almost 5. My path to lucid dreaming is rather ..odd.. but in short I accidently read about lucid dreaming quickly, and thought it was nothing. That night(about 4 months ago) I had a lucid dream and became astounded by what this means about our waking reality. Then after lots of research, I have found that all those gurus in Tibet aren't just a bunch of hippies!
Dreams are your spirits language which only you can decipher. Dream journals are basically your dictionary. You will learn which dreams are pre, post cognitive, just dreams, lessons to be learned, directions to take, etc. You can't explain to people what you saw in your dream because it won't make sense to them, just tell them what you decoded from your dream.
rdubya,
Thanks for the continued insights. Oddly enough, your lucidity "timeline" coincides roughly with mine. I had an intense lucid dream about four or five months ago that shook me down to the core of my being (in a very good way--you could say it woke me from my "dogmatic slumbers"!).
That kicked in my investigations into lucid dreaming--a term which at that time I didn't know existed. Since then I've also started seriously reassessing my views about waking reality (which, since my adolescence, has always felt a little "thin" to me to begin with).
I've meditated off an on for over 20 years, but meditation never seemed to quite "work" for me (however, post-graduate work in Western philosophy didn't quite "work" for me either). What I like about lucid dreaming is that it's an oddity in life that I believe almost everyone experiences at some point in their lives (or at least has the potential for experiencing). The implication here is that we all have this direct link into the "wholly other", as Terrence McKenna once said. Oddly, lucid dreaming has given me new insights into meditation. I'm still not meditating on a regular basis right now, but lucid dreaming has gone a long way in making the actual practice of meditating "work" for me (as opposed to just working for me on a conceptual basis).
Dreams, lucid and non-lucid, are indeed incredibly personal. But the odd thing about dreaming is that we all have them. Like waking reality, the dream reality is personal, but oddly "shared" as well. You could say that dying is the same kind of thing. But I just can't shake this feeling that there's much more going on down there. As Robert Waggoner writes in his book, there are things in lucid dreams we just do not control. But if we don't control these items (like the creation of dream scenes, or dream figures who act incredibly autonomous), then it begs the question of "who" or "what" does this controlling? Waggoner posits that unconsciousness itself is a much more complex structure than we tend to give credit to. And it's still largely terra incognito. My recent experiences in lucid dreaming tend to make me agree with him.
And, hey, as far as those Tibetans being hippies, here's a (probably bad) analogy. Truman Capote once dismissed Jack Kerouac's writing as "mere typing". But what Capote failed to realize is that that was really cool typing! By extension, maybe those monks are just really cool hippies! ;)
Finnegan,
Just a thought on "forgetting LD". I had a strong LD the other night. During the day, I was thinking to myself, I was sure I had a LD, how can I not remember it?? Then it came to me, and I recalled it just like normal dream recalling. Then I also realize there was a part I lost the LD and fell back to the dream. Perhaps this is why I did not remember the LD since I did not "wake" from it, it continued in the form of a dream. Once I started recalling it, it was as vivid as typing this on the forum, and crazy how I forgot I did it.
-Ryan
rdubya wrote: Finnegan, Just a thought on "forgetting LD". I had a strong LD the other night. During the day, I was thinking to myself, I was sure I had a LD, how can I not remember it?? Then it came to me, and I recalled it just like normal dream recalling. Then I also realize there was a part I lost the LD and fell back to the dream. Perhaps this is why I did not remember the LD since I did not "wake" from it, it continued in the form of a dream. Once I started recalling it, it was as vivid as typing this on the forum, and crazy how I forgot I did it. -Ryan
Hey Ryan,
Yeah, that's interesting. I had something very similar happen to me in a recent LD. It was my first where the lucidity lasted for quite a while (or at least it seemed that way, I think the actual (external? physical?) dream lasted, say, only five to ten minutes at the most). Anyway, there are parts of the dream that I can't quite recall, even though I was lucid throughout.
So, you are right, my friend. And I can totally see how a person might not recall LDs at all after having them for a while (a thought that disturbs me greatly).
In my case, the problematic dream recall in that recent LD might be that it has to do with a pretty indescribably situation: A major dream shift that ended up in a false awakening--where then I did realize that I was in a different dream and still was lucid (like being "born" into a new dream). I can (and did) use English to write about the two "ends"--the actual pre- and post-shift dreams--but the shift itself was like the end sequence in the Kubrick movie 2001 as far as complete weirdness (LSD was never this strange!). The closest I can come to describing it is simply with the words "tunnel" and "surfing"--but the words don't do justice to the experience--and there was much more to it I only have vague, fleeting notions of.
Dream recall, lucid or non-lucid, continues to fascinate me for just the reason you mentioned. How can something be so vivid once recalled, where before it was almost non-existent? This, of course, can and does happen in waking reality. We all know this, but those memory "erasers" seem particularly at work at night. Just this morning I took the time before heading out to work to journal a non-lucid dream I had. Not because the dream was particularly interesting, but simply because, if I hadn't recalled it--and I really had to work to get it--I would've summed up the night as not having particularly vivid dreams. But, once recalled, it was a full-on, very vivid dream. I also know that I had a few dreams earlier in the night that were probably even more intense and more vivid (there's just this feeling about them). I almost recalled one of them, but it slipped away, much to my chagrin. And that's another odd phenomena: that sometimes the act of recall will actually push the dream farther away out of reach. It's like a Chinese finger-trap of the mind!
--Finn
There definitely is a wonderful amount of unknowns for this, especially in the scientific community. We just haven't been able to "dissect" what the mind is and how it works. A strong notion is that the mind cannot work without the brain, however look how far we have gotten with that belief. Not very far at all. Many scientists are convinced everything we think stems from the brain. I personally believe that is why the complexity of the brain is not understood, we think it does more than it really does.
For example:
How does the eye work? The eye refracts light and then is interpreted by your brain.(we don't think the eye interprets sound waves, we say the ears do that)
How does the brain work? The brain transfers current reality "data"(most commonly gathered from our 5 senses) and your mind interprets it.
How does the mind work? That we have yet to discover.
Probably THE philosophical conundrum of Western civilization is Cartesian duality: how does this immaterial construct we call the "mind" interact with this material construct that we call "nature" (which includes our own brains)? Descartes believed that they were two separate and distinct "substances", so how do they interact?*
Different thinkers over history have tended to try to solve the problem by thinking away one or the other, or that one realm was actually subservient somehow to the other. Spinoza, to take one case, weighed in on the side of the mind being primary. The materialists, of course, believed just the opposite, and there were plenty of piss-poor deus ex machinas along the way that thinkers would employ to get out of all kinds of tough philosophical jams (often with the Catholic church hot on their heels).
Science, of course, tends to weigh in heavily on the materialist side of things. One of its most pernicious views being that not only does the mind not exist--but neither does consciousness. It's just an "epiphenomenon" that the brain creates. From that viewpoint you can see how easy it is to dismiss everything we experience in life as an illusion--that, beyond our physical processes, we're not really "alive" at all--at least not in any way that we feel and experience life. Under that viewpoint, we're just fooling ourselves into believing we're alive at all...
--And you don't even want to begin to talk about lucid dreaming to those folks! ;)
There's much more to say here, but instead of my yackin', here are some lines from T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men instead:
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow
--Finn
*Descartes wimped out by saying the pineal gland was the doorway between these two "substances" (which he called "thought" and "extension")--but the pineal gland is still a physical part of the body, so...
Good information there Finn. I would say that was a pretty good summary of the two sides of the debate to be honest. Of course I like to believe my side is right =). Right or wrong, it is surely more interesting in discovering than just accepting something I was told.
In all truth, I have no idea if the world is in fact round. It could be an odd shape oval for all I know, but I simply accept the truth that society has told me because I have no interest in discovering that truth. I could care less if it is a triangle or a sphere, I just appreciate it for what it is. But knowing the truths of the mind, now that interests me. I feel we are not able to appreciate the mind for what it is because we have put such low limits on its capabilities. But, to each his own, so if this doesn't interest everyone, so be it, I am just glad there are others such as ourselves who are curious in the same subject.
rdubya wrote: But knowing the truths of the mind, now that interests me.
--If, indeed the mind exists. There's the rub. As we all know, believing doesn't necessarily make something true.
I got thinking more about all this last evening, and it made me think again about how so much of the way we make sense of the world we live in (including our own sense of self) is wrapped up in the language we use to describe that world. Wittgenstein perhaps expressed this best with the simple aphorism The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. That tends to beg the question: So, if you change your language, then in some way do you change the world (or at least "your" world)?
This ties in with something you mentioned in an early post in this thread, where you said something along the lines of --that line of thinking didn't get us very far. Talking about things in terms of Cartesian duality might have, historically, worked for a while (and in many cases it's still a useful conceptual tool), but by the early 20th century, some of the major eggheads started to think that we needed new ways to talk about philosophical topics. This development seems to have coincided with conceptual changes in science. It's not that the world stopped working according to Newtonian physics. Far from it. But there were wider topics of consideration that came to light due to research that had been done in such seemingly disparate specialties as electromagnetism, gravity, and the speed of light (I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this). In a way, you could say that a new, substratum of reality itself opened up.
--And I guess you could sum up all that was going on, historically speaking, with the now overused term "paradigm shift".
One of the more interesting thinkers who tried to undermine Cartesian dualism with both new concepts and a new type of vocabulary was Alfred North Whitehead. He started to think that "reality" should not be thought of as something static, like a frog that can be dissected. He started thinking of it more as a type of "process" or dynamic system (shades of early cybernetics here!). I don't want to say much more about Whitehead because, well, I'm not all that familiar with his work, but what I think is interesting is that his work was dismissed during the middle part of the last century as just not being very relevant or even very interesting, but his magnum opus Process and Reality has slowly been reassessed over the last, say, forty years or so--and, for myself, when I cogitate over the topic of lucid dreaming Whitehead's ideas often come to mind.
As a matter of fact, beyond the personal practice of working toward lucid dreaming with an increased regularity, the idea of lucid dreaming presents--at least for me--some incredibly interesting philosophical perspectives and paradoxes. Yeah, it's great to fly all around, have dream sex (if you get lucky, that is), get out of your body, be a secret agent, go to the moon...but there's really so much more there to consider. I'm probably repeating myself, but just the idea of being awake while you're asleep is a philosophical nugget of gold! And this isn't some kind of esoteric topic that only the academics would be interested in, like language analysis itself. Everybody sleeps; everybody dream (whether you remember it or not), and it happens every single night.
I'll leave y'all with this question: Since dreaming is only one part of our nocturnal experience, is there any possible way that someone could become lucid at some other point during the night? In other words, could you become lucid, say, during just regular sleep (call it lucid sleeping!)? If so, how?--and what the heck does that feel like!? If no, why?--and what, if anything, does that have to say about lucid dreaming or dreaming in general?
Knowing the truths of mind and/or brain then =).
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." Arthur Schopenheur.
This quote could be used to explain your language limits of the world. Once a truth becomes "self-evident", it is now a part of a language and other possibilities of truths(in forms of new language) open from this.
Lucid Dreaming entertains me sure, but my true interest is upon finding the relevance of it to the physical life. I have read many accounts of Astral Traveling including at a low vibrational state that allows the person to perceive the physical world and objects in it. But, I need to do this myself or experience someone who can first hand before I am convinced it possible, and lucid dreaming is the starting point i have read from every source.
As for being able to Lucid Dream whenever, again, I have read masters, such as Tibetan Monks who meditate 4 hours daily, can enter this state fairly rapidly at any time. I have no reason to doubt these readings as all of the content have been accurate to my own experiences. I don't see why this wouldn't be possible, I think it is just easiest for beginners to do it during sleep.
Interesting thoughts, I don’t think you need to be in rem sleep to dream at all. I have used some supplements recently with great results and one of them 5-HTP is meant to suppress REM sleep so to create a REM rebound at some stage of the night. I used these and if the supplements are working and I have tried 2 brands of them I still can get dreams and vivid dreams from the word go. I have real issues with blank statements that box off anything into black and white. It only takes one incident to change a view and open up new prospects I will post soon on my experiences with herbs/supplements Peter
rdubya wrote: Knowing the truths of mind and/or brain then =).
Ok, then, what makes you think the brain exists? ;)
Peter wrote: I have used some supplements recently
Hey, have you guys found any supplements for just increasing dream vividness? I guess I'm trying to answer the question of why some dreams are easy to remember and others not so much--or not at all. Is there a link between "vividness" (whatever that means, but I think we all have a general sense of it) and recall, or does it just all come down to recall skill--or is it a combination of the two?
Seems to me that vividness does play some kind of roll (or at least for me personally), but I'm still investigating into it.
Anybody try mugwort?
A couple of people have written reviews on some supplements. I am trying to avoid them, but I did find a glass of apple juice before bed helped me get into a Lucid Dream. I would just hate to find using a supplement that was supposed to be harmless end up causing damage to my brain, but that's more of a fear than a "anti supplement" stance.
Def let me know which ones give you success.
Also, if the brain doesn't exist, then it is only the mind that exists =) Which is what I believe some philosophers say is the truth. That our mind is a mind within "the great' mind that could be referred to as God. That there is no such thing as space and time, just the laws of the dream, just as when we experience our Lucid Dreams, the objects and people don't physically exist anywhere, we just perceive them as physical. The physical world is the lucid dream of God, and we are simply parts of God. Much more plausible for me after experiencing a LD, but I figure I'll worry about figuring that stuff out when I am dead...that way if there is an afterlife I can figure that stuff out then, no point of worrying about it now =)
I dont like them either and have been known to put up with small headaches for months and wont even take a disprin or anything so was very reluctant but will now use one small lot about each 2 weeks. Also as far as putting stuff in out bodies I think our food production chain has dealt to any hope of pure food years ago
rdubya wrote: I did find a glass of apple juice
Yeah! That's what that "inkpoet" guy mentioned somewhere above. Man, wouldn't it be wild if good old apple juice was the best substance to use for lucid dreaming? I mean you can't get much healthier than that!
Peter wrote: I dont like them either
Yeah, I know what you mean. I tried cocktails of triptaphane and choline a while back, but it started to give me a very weird headache (coulda been psychosomatic, though), but anyway I gave all that stuff up. I am going to try brewing up a batch of mugwort tonight though, but it's probably going to take a while.
rdubya wrote: Also, if the brain doesn't exist, then it is only the mind that exists
Mmmm, well, again--only if you buy into Cartesian dualism (which most of us do whether we like it or not. It's just part of our "conceptual legacy"). Lucid dreaming is another one of those odd things (like quantum mechanics, which is best discussed via mathematics) that tests the limits of our "antiquated systems" (to borrow a phrase from Jack Nicholson's character in the old movie Easy Rider--funny scene, btw!). We need a better way to think and talk about all this stuff--but right now we're stuck with what we've got!
Oddly enough, though, you could think of Descartes as a type of starting point. One of his "meditations" in his Discourse on Method concerns how--if at all--you can tell if you're dreaming on not. Apparently, ol' Rene knew nothing about lucid dreaming! --but he doesn't answer the question adequately at all.
Believe it or not, Robert Waggoner's book is the source for all this speculation I'm doing. Right now I'm really into thinking about dream characters. How do we define "personhood" in the real world? Well, it usually has something to do with someone acting with some kind of autonomy, right? But I've had lucid dreams where characters acted incredibly autonomous. So, can you conclude that, in some odd sense, these dream characters have personhood? Should they be respected somehow? Do the in some way have "rights"?
Personally, and in an odd way, I'd like to think so. But what about those occasions where your significant other is raving mad at you in the morning because "you" were acting like a jerk in her/his dream!? "Honest, honey--that was not me!" And here the snake starts to eat its own tail...
rdubya wrote: That there is no such thing as space and time
If that's the case, then we are alive, we have always been alive, and we always will be alive. On the other hand, we're dead, we've always been dead, and we always will be dead--all at the same time. I'm not in the least prepared to say this is so, but it might be one of the things our dreams are trying to tell us--and ultimately it's again pointing towards the limits of our language and current philosphical conceptions.
rdubya wrote: I'll worry about figuring that stuff out when I am dead
Given that there's no space and time then, what makes you think that, at least in some sense, you're not already "dead" ? ;)
We are dead and we are alive at the same time - why not. We dream and we control PART of the dream - something else dreams and controls PART of the dream, so a LD is an interface between 2 forms of awareness that are dreaming at the same time or in the same space - well why not :-)
Peter
Peter wrote: We are dead and we are alive at the same time - why not. We dream and we control PART of the dream - something else dreams and controls PART of the dream, so a LD is an interface between 2 forms of awareness that are dreaming at the same time or in the same space - well why not :-) Peter
Nice, Peter. That's well put.
It's probably no surprise by now that I'm somewhat of a fan of the Irish writer James Joyce, who of course penned the "novel" Finnegans Wake--which is about not only dreaming, but sleeping and the entire nocturnal experience. (I mistyped the title when I was creating my username, btw--doh! Idiot!).
Anyway, it's--to say the least--a difficult book to "read" in any normal sense of the word (if you're not quite sure what I mean, pick up a copy, turn to any random page and try reading it. It's like getting hit with 300 ugs of microdot). As a result, readers of this work (and Joyce in general) tend to collect a lot of secondary source material--critical analyses and the like.
One of my favorites of these is by a guy who teaches literature at UC Berkeley named John Bishop. Back in the 80s he wrote this fantastic, playful, fun to read book on Finnegans Wake called Joyce's Book of the Dark. And in it he discusses how dreaming (the whole gamut of sleeping actually) is the closest experience we have to death--and we have this experience every night. There's an entire chapter, for example, on the Egyptian Book of the Dead (which Joyce used extensively as source material). But there are also great speculations as well into what happens to the self, what happens to memory (which Joyce respells "m'm'ry" (memory with holes in it)--indeed what happens to "you" during the night.
Because of the way it's written, Finnegans Wake also presents us with a radically different concept of language. The language of the "Wake" is a polyglot of more or less all the languages that exist on earth (and some that no longer exist), and Joyce employed multi-linguistic "puns" throughout to convey, not double-entendres, by *multi-*entendres that can and often do span a number of different languages at the same time. Ultimately Joyce's novel offers up a completely different and radical way to look at and use language--but again, that language is couched within the language of sleeping and, in particular, dreaming (as a matter of fact, a number of my lucid dreaming experiences have been what I can only call, well, "Wakean").
I bring all this up just to mention that this is what's been driving a lot of these questions I've been asking here.
--FW
I would be very disappointed if life was as easy as heaven and hell...haha.