From: Stirling Westrup (sti@cam.org)
Date: Tue Mar 04 2003 - 11:19:53 MST
On 3 Mar 2003 at 11:48, nanowave wrote:
> 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.
> 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!
I've had Lucid Dreaming experiences as far back as I can remember, without
having had to study or train. Most of the time when I am asleep I know that I
am dreaming. I very seldom try to influence the dream, because I always find
that there is a sort of inertia or counter-force at work. For example, I
might decide to walk through a brick wall, rather than continue trying to
find a way over it. When I succeed (with difficulty) I'll find that whats on
the other side has radically changed...
As I get older I've found that this counter-force is getting weaker, or that
I'm getting better at controlling it, or something. I've always thought of it
as the unconcious story-teller who's upset at me messing with the narative.
> 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.
I have long since banished all watches from my dreamscape, since at some
point I noticed that EVERY time I looked at a watch in my dreams, its message
was 'Wake up, you're late for work!" At which point I would, in a panic,
force myself to wake up. Do that enough times at 3:00 am, and it becomes a
problem.
-- Stirling Westrup | Use of the Internet by this poster sti@cam.org | is not to be construed as a tacit | endorsement of Western Technological | Civilization or its appurtenances.
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