Total Lucidity, after a long time, using the sleep/wake/sleep method...

I must shoot myself for not using the sleep/wake/sleep technique all this while. I have used it once successfully and out of ignorance I haven't used it for more a year and have been worrying about not becoming lucid!

The technique was named sleep/wake/sleep or the nap technique (which I found somewhere online). Because one should wake up from sleep, stay awake for a little while and go back to sleep for this method to work. It works great for me. But I feel sleepy at office the next day :-)

So here's what happened...

I was reading about lucid dreaming from Friday and was having a great desire to become lucid. I set the alarm for 3 am yesterday, but after feeling 'lazy' deactivated the alarm before going to bed!.

But fortunately, I woke up feeling something crawling under my back... freaked out. It was a big, black ant! (it was 03:36 am) Since I woke up, I went and had a glass of water and went to the washroom. Once I'm back in bed, I fired up the browser in my mobile phone and read an article about lucid dreaming. When it was almost 20 minutes since I woke up, I switched the light off and went back to sleep.

I started telling myself "I will be aware when I am dreaming...". And (this is the important part) I look for images building up... that is, I just look in the darkness behind my eyelids while i fall asleep for any images I start seeing. Once I start seeing, I try to imagine/project something or some place I want to see in my dream... since I am watching very carefully and because I am reminding myself to be aware when I am dreaming, it happens! I became lucid. 3 or 4 times as I remember. I go straight into a lucid dream.

This is the 1st time, I had some dream characters in the dream.

I was walking on the road when the 1st dream started, I saw a girl walking ahead of me (well, what else a guy needs in a lucid dream lol ). Wearing slacks and a short-sleeved shirt. I looked back and saw a guy walking too. He was the brother of that girl. But who cares, since this is a lucid dream, I went closer to her boldly and started talking to her while walking beside her. I was asking some questions and she was answering me (which I don't remember). I touch her slowly to feel her skin, she blushes, but keeps communicating with me. I feel her buttocks with my hands too. My heart was racing. When I looked back, the brother of the girl was approaching us fast with a frowning face... uh oh! He came closer and pinched me hard on my back. lol.

But I didn't want to hurt him. I am not the type of guy who would go and touch a girl on the road or hit a guy (though I touched a girl in a lucid dream ;-) ). So what I did was, took hold of his hand, lifted him up spin once and threw him over my head (while wishing he should land safely). It was a playground to which he was thrown... so I watched him land in slow-motion as I wished. He too enjoys the 'landing'. He smiles and walks away :-) He didn't bother us after that. I woke up though.

But again I induced a dream the same way, wishing to be in the same place with the girl and it happened. Though she was wearing a different dress and the place looked a little bit different. I took hold of her hand and we ran fast together, giggling... it was fun. And I stopped in a hill and looked at her... she came close to me and we kissed. The 1st kiss in a lucid dream. It felt so real that I could feel my erection in bed (the physical one I mean), while I am in the dream. We walked a couple of steps ahead and I lost the dream again. I couldn't enter it after that.

But I had another lucid dream in another place for a brief period, where I was in a room and wanted to get out of it to try some flying. But my uncle was there in the room and was talking to me. Because I wanted to get out of the room I 'wish' my phone must ring... and it happens! So I excuse him and get out of there (how nice it would be if these things would work in the physical world too... lol). Once I am outside, I start levitating... I feel the cool breeze when I rise up slowly, while gazing at the stars in the sky... but it didn't last for a long time. I woke up.

After that I found it very difficult to sleep, let alone become lucid. So it was the end of a nice session of lucid dreams, after a very long period. I guess I would be lucid more often hereafter. Because my mind is now set in it. Got to control the urge to see women in the dreams though, cos' I am missing out on seeing great landscapes and other interesting things that are only accessible in lucid dreams.

The day at office was a sleepy one for me. Some good portion of sleep is lost because of this technique I guess.

Happy dreaming.

"Waking Life" the movie about dreams and lucid dreams

I happen to watch a movie about dreams after a long long time... actually it was after "The Matrix". This isn't an action movie though.

"Waking Life" tells the story of a young man who drifts in an out of a cycle of dreams, trying hard to wake up for real... he is so frustrated because he could not wake up breaking the chain of dreams and lucid dreams.

But hey, if it was me, I will never want to wake up from a lucid dream... It's a dream of everyone to have lucid dreams continuously like that ;-)

It addresses philosophical ideas in depth too... And this movie launched or brought back the desire to have lucid dreams back in me. So I recommend this to every lucid dreaming enthusiast.

What's more, I discovered a new musician (new to me)... Guy Forsyth, from this movie (yes he plays as a dream character in a scene too). I really liked the way he played the Mandolin, or some instrument like that :-) in the movie scene while talking about dreams with the movie's main character.

The video editing is so cool. They have used a technique that makes the whole movie look almost like a dream.

There was a scene where the main character meets a hot girl, and they start kissing... And I thought, well, this is a lucid dream and he is going to make love to her, but he wakes up in the middle of the kiss, as it happens to all of us ;-) God only knows why we tend to snap out of a lucid dream and wake up suddenly when we are excited seeing a hot girl in a lucid dream ;-)

Anyway, this is a cool movie, that every 'dreamer' should watch.

Happy dreaming.

A way to increase lucid dreams, from Paul Brunton the philosopher

I remember the day I had my first lucid dream... I was actually shocked recently when I remembered about the incident back in around year 2003. Because of the ease with which I have achieved lucidity back then.

Even though I haven't read much about lucid dreams or even had no access to the Internet, the lucid dreaming experience came within 3 days, after I read (an practiced!) an interesting technique in a book that was not related to lucid dreaming.

It was non other than the book named "Wisdom Of The Overself" by Paul Brunton, a European philosopher. Who talked about meditation, religion etc.

His technique was simple. When one gets onto bed at night, he asks to close the eyes as we would normally do and to relax the whole body (usual stuff). We should try to calm our minds and think of the day's incidents in sequential order...

The only thing I don't remember is whether he asked to go through the events in reverse order or to start from morning and come upto the moment we got onto bed.

I will update if I get to know that bit soon, if I get my hands on that book again (I couldn't find the book where I live... I used to read the book in a public library back then)

Anyway, in summary, when I had little experience in reading about stuff like lucid dreaming and astral projection, his technique yeilded results within 3 days. That was the amazing fact I remember. But please remember that he is not a lucid dreaming or astral projection guru.

Happy dreaming...