From: nanowave (nanowave@shaw.ca)
Date: Mon Mar 03 2003 - 12:48:58 MST
Hi folks,
Over the course of the past five days, and nights, I have been working
(hard) to developing the skills necessary to successfully achieve Lucid
Dreaming. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, it means consciously
realizing that one is asleep and dreaming, when one is, in fact, asleep and
dreaming.
After researching the topic from a transhumanist angle (the only angle I now
possess), I've become convinced that LD may offer an extraordinarily high
resolution "sneak peek" into what complete immersion in a seamless virtual
reality, or life as an upload may be like (minus the mind-mind networking
capability of course).
I am very excited about this! Although I have yet to achieve true
intentional REM lucidity (the literature does explain that such early
successes are fairly uncommon) I do believe I'm making excellent progress.
Consider:
1. Five days ago I could not have described a single dream that I've had in
2003, or even in the present century for that matter. Not a single one.
Prior to this experiment, the only thing I could have said for certain is
that I'm reasonably sure I was indeed having dreams, but the details have
all but vanished.
Quite astonishing really when you think about it - all those adventures,
dramas, traumas, pleasures - gone without a trace, or maybe hiding in the
shadows of my subconscious to nudge me with a future feelings of deja vous.
2. Today I can describe in vivid detail up to seven dreams that I've had
recently - four of them last night as a matter of fact! I guess I won't
bother writing them out here, but the point is, I could. One thing - my
dreams seem to be getting more vivid and in some ways more disturbing. This
combined with some other recurring themes lead me to believe that my
subconscious may actually be putting up some kind of concerted defense
against my conscious mind breaking through. Incredible!
3. I have also had one poignant success at maintaining conscious awareness
well into the first stages of sleep. I knew I was falling asleep, yet I
remained completely aware that my thoughts were becoming oddly random,
colors were shifting and textures were changing. Ambient sounds were became
hollowed out and were replaced with different sounds. The last thing I
remember is a sense of complete wonder that I had never noticed these
presumably daily events from this detached calm frame of reference before.
The training regimen I've created for myself is fairly straight forward. My
watch beeps every hour on the hour during the day, and that reminds me to
perform a "Reality Check"
i.e. I simply ask myself: "Is this a dream?" and then I glance at my hands
for a few seconds for any signs of "weirdness". Then I look at my watch,
look away, and look back again to see if the numerals remain consistent and
logical. Another quick glance around at my surroundings, and then it's back
to whatever I was doing before. Apparently when this has become completely
second nature, I can expect that I'll do it while engaged in an actual
dream. At that point, it will supposedly be able to realize that I'm
dreaming. Then I can either begin to exert control over the path of the
dream, or simply go with the flow.
Before I fall asleep each night, I also try to visualize myself being
consciously awake in my dreams, and if I wake up immediately after a dream,
(a regular occurrence now) I lie very still and repeatedly go over as many
details as possible to try to commit them to conscious memory.
A couple of other things that I keep in mind:
- "the poker hand" (remembering to remain emotionally cool and detached the
moment I first realize I have achieved success - lest the excitement wake me
up - a commonly reported occurrence)
- and "dream spinning" (physically spinning my dream body around in a circle
in an effort to restore a lucid dream that appears to be fading)
Anyhow, I'll let you all know when I'm successful at this, here's a few
links if you're interested. BTW, I'd love to purchase the fancy eyewear and
computer interface gadget, but supposedly they aren't really necessary and,
yikes, three hundred bucks!
http://www.lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html
Russell Evermore
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