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Dreaming 101

  
 
Spyder Todd 2008
00:57 / 31.10.03
I'm interested in dreams. Always have been. But, aside from the reoccuring dream I've been having for the last month, I really lack experince with the...stranger forms of dreaming. And I lack the time to read every post on it here. So, who the things with their dreams, what do they do, and how do they do it?
 
 
makeitbleed
04:22 / 31.10.03
I lucid dream every now and then, but it takes me a few weeks of thinking about it before I sleep. I can control what happens in the dream. Often I'll realize mid-dream and continue something already occuring such as flying. I haven't been able to control the entire environment, situation or who's in the dream all at the same time.

Usually I'll get busy, stressed or piss drunk after a few days and it goes away.

This is just something I've done, I'm betting there are some resources that have a tried and true method of achieving this.
 
 
illmatic
07:30 / 31.10.03
You should take the time to read the other threads, Spyder - there's ome good stuff there. Though I suppose it's fun to start a lively one rather than reading a load of discussion from two years ago. Rather than replicate all this info, I thought I'd stick in a link to someone's experience for a bit of a change.

This is an account of a friend of mine's experience, which weaves it's way in and out of his dreams, right through to physcial manifestation.

I think the best start is to keep a regualr dream diary. That originally came out as "dream dairy" and I think you should keep one of those as well.
 
 
Olulabelle
09:43 / 31.10.03
There really is a lot of interesting stuff on here about dreaming Spyder, some of it is anecdotal, but lots of it is instructive. I know it's dull to go trawling through things but sometimes it also gets a bit waring having to resay things over and over again.

Anyway, Illmatic is right. The first step to dreaming skills is to keep a dream diary. Keep it by your bed, and first thing when you wake up hold the thoughts that you have in your head, move as little as possible and write down what you dreamt. If you can't remember what you dreamt, record the feelings and colours and moods your dream has left you with. Do this everyday for a while, and then if you find what you are writing is interesting to you, you can perhaps start practicing lucid dreaming techniques.

Also, if you're serious about gaining experience in dreaming, don't smoke gear as it interferes with your recall and recall is all important for any dreaming skill.
 
 
Quantum
09:47 / 31.10.03
Visualise your dreams as cows, and milk them for gallons of lucidity in your dream dairy- then you can have lucid creams. *hahahaha*

Top tips- dreaming journal, looking at your hands, trying to change light levels and looking at writing (neither will be right if you're dreaming), give up smoking dope, don't move when you wake until you've written your dream down, read Carlos Castaneda, watch Waking Life by Linklater, get a good book on it, here's a list.
 
 
Quantum
09:48 / 31.10.03
..and ask Olulabelle about it
 
 
illmatic
10:15 / 31.10.03
I'd second/third that tip about not smoking da weed, it seems to make you sleep heavier and you can't remember shit in the morning. I found dream stuff came up for me when I was doing lots of guided visualisations, banishing before bed, that kind of thing. I sometimes think lucid dreaming is a bit over-rated - I'm not knocking it, it's an interesting experience - but all I ever did when it first happend to me was fly around a bit and then try and get a shag. Sometimes when images or sequences arise spontaneoulsy, it seems more intersting to me than lucidity, because this stuff is coming from somewhere else - not your conscious intentions. Obviously, you can investigate stuff like this when your lucid - try and draw a symbol (elemental, qabalistic, whatever) on a door and go through it - you can do this as guided visualistions in your waking life to reinforce this. I've had some very intersting results from doing this. (It doesn't work all the time though, like any magical technique).

Also, you can churn the lucid cream and make lucid cheese. Cheese is notorious for giving people bad dreams, probably because the moon is made of cream cheese, thus linking us into the qabalistic sphere of Yesod.
 
 
Spyder Todd 2008
00:09 / 02.11.03
Once I find time, I will be reading older stuff. Never enough time... And I guess it's a good thing I don't smoke. I do like cheese, though.

I guess what I really am looking for is techniques. How do you lucid dream? What do all of you do to do things like that? That's what I'm really looking for.
 
 
The Dadaist
01:31 / 03.11.03
Can I give up smoking dope for a few days and then have a lucid dream?
or is it essential to give up with the weed forever? I can´t do that!
 
 
Seth
04:11 / 03.11.03
Powerful dream this morning. I woke up at about quarter past three, been awake ever since. Not hard to interpret what it was about! I have lots on my mind.

I'm also an advocate of keeping a dream journal. It's one of the best disciplines I ever got into, a great exercise in its own right even if you never get into dream control. I've got over two years worth backed up, some of it extremely detailed. The best reason I ever heard for doing it: we spend a third of our lives asleep. Dream journalling extends your life expectancy by allowing you to remember more of your life. It also gives access to resources that would otherwise be left unremembered, and can be a fantastic source of guidance.

On my NLP course a couple of weeks back I made the first steps towards trying to build a sensory strategy for lucid dreaming. Not made much progress yet, but one of the first things I noticed was that on the occasions in which I lucid dreamed I was associated with the dream, looking out from my own eyes. I can't recall any occasion in which I've been dissociated and achieved lucidity. It's as if in the former I'm involved, in the latter I'm the spectator of a movie in which I may or may not feature. Has anyone else experienced that? It may not be universal. I'd be interested to hear any accounts to look for commonalities, specifically what people were seeing, hearing, thinking, and feeling before they became lucid and after.
 
 
illmatic
07:42 / 03.11.03
Spyder - the first step is keep a dream diary as I said above. Enagaging with your dreamlife is going to prime you more for lucidity. Also, any imagery arising may give you something to work with when you do become lucid rather than just flying around and having a shag as I mentioned above. I do it by asking myself whether I'm dreaming or not all day, every 10-15 minutes. If you establish this as a habit in the day, especially in the evening in the run up to sleep, eventually you'll start doing it in your sleep and it can trigger you to become lucid. Your next trick will be figuring out how to do it and not wake up. Drifting off back to sleep in the morning (usually with a hangover) sometimes works for me.

Seth - don't know if this is what you mean but the more note I've taken of my dream life, the more I've noticed different sorts of dreams. Spare mentions somewhere there being at least 6 ddifferent sorts of dream, but doesn't list them. One distinct type I've noticed is mad story type things happening which I'm not very associated with. These tend to happen when I've overslept as if my mind is just filling in time till I wake up.Is this what you mean? I find these reasonable easy to go lucid in, because I'm not deeply asleep. Another sort of dreams is the deep dreams which involve archetypal symbolism rising up. I tend to go lucid a lot less in these, it's as if they've got a message for me and it doesn't matter if I'm consciously interacting with it or not, though I have gone lucid in these before and stuff has happened. Similarly I've had the opposite, when I become lucid and all the "power" goes out the symbol - it become something else. The last one I can recall this is a dream of my dad, I went into a room where he was to attempt to alleviate his suffering, became lucid and attempted to communicate with him, upon which he became something else - blurred into a free floating dream figure interacting with me, still the sense of an "other" but not my dad. So perhaps lucidity can take away from our experiences as I was trying to suggest above.
 
 
The Fourth
19:33 / 04.11.03
Learning more about dreaming and how to dream more fully is fab. And yes, keeping diary is the way in (no reason this has to be written though eh? what about a dictaphone or something? Or a sexy secretary who sits by the bedside each morning and takes down your dictation - a bit distracting perhaps.... anyway). I really got a lot out of my draeming work, loved it. Some things I found useful were when writing up my diary I didn't bother about grammar, spelling and the like. Neither did I try to make it stream of consciousness either, the focus was on getting down dream info and detail and not letting any type of writing skills get in the way. I found plain paper rather than lined better too. Keep the diary by the bed with a pen to hand. I also tried to maintain the period of semi-conscious time prior to full waking in which to recall dreams (my personal 'dawn' as it were). I also found the atmosphere of the dream and the feelings I had in the dream were often very evokative rahter than trying to focus on detail specifically. On going to sleep I would try to nurture that hypnogogic state before sleep comes down ('twilight!') and suggest/request that I remember dreams. I also used this time to request specific dream topics or increased lucidity etc. It worked quite well especially the more I practised it. Eventually I was able to remember several dreams I had during one night, was able to change direction of dreams or change to an entirely different dream if not happy with the one occuring and other things to. Never got good at dealing with nightmares though - not by this method at any rate.

I loved this work and found it really rewarding and a great source of learning. Gave it up in the end as a deliberate pursuit as I found I craved dreaming time during the day and would often cat nap to get some extra dreaming in (didn't matter much in a way as I was pretending to be at college at the time!), and then I would spend most of my waking time thinking about dreams or recalling them or even day dreaming....

Oh, and good news for you spyder fellow, I smoked weed or hash, pretty much anything I could get my hands on, every day during this period of my life, drank a fair amount of alcohol too! Trick is, to make sure you've got time BEFORE waking preferably to remember the dream, then write up, then wake up and then get up and skin up presumably! Oh and ban alarm clocks. Set an internal alarm. Easy now.
 
 
Lionheart
20:25 / 04.11.03
I didn't see this thread when I posted up my thread! I swear! Don't break my kneecaps!

To make up for my thread-rot...

http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/163_hypnagogia.shtml
 
 
Tim Tempest
18:51 / 07.11.05
Before I started a new thread, I thought I'd post in this one because it sounded the closest to what I need...

I sometimes write songs in my dreams. Full music, lyrics and all, and I can occasionally recall some details about the songs...but does the mind record dreams? I had this absolutely wicked song in my dream last night, and when I awoke, I could remember almost nothing about it...I forgot the tune, and almost all of the lyrics...

So help me Barbelith...is there any hope that I can go on a dream/memory retrieval operation and get this song back???

(Just to clarify, I need to remember a PAST dream, so I thought this was a little different from the above posts in that they were about remembering dreams that you have in the FUTURE).
 
 
electric monk
19:15 / 07.11.05
Maybe I.M.P. could help? Sounds like this may be within it's realm of influence.
 
 
Dead Megatron
19:32 / 07.11.05
My personal experience tells this: if you want vivid, intense dreaming, don't do drugs, specially hallucinogenis. Marijuana, mushrooms, and the like deem too much the barrier between waking and dreaming like, which means you don't actually have that good a dreaming. I guess that's because all the tension which is normally released by dreaming is already released. A good dreaming comes from a very compartmentalized subconscious self, I reckon.

I haven't got a decent dream since last year's dryspell. I kinda miss it.
 
 
ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!
06:28 / 08.11.05
I'm going to have to agree with the no-doing-drugs thing.

Opiates and weed (but not booze, oddly) killed my lucid dreaming spell dead.

Well, not dead, but each night after the first night where there was drugs involved was progressively less and less lucid. I knew I was dreaming, but I sort of couldn't push my mind into taking control of things, and would sink down into watching it all unfold with a mental sigh. It felt like there was some kind of membrane I was pushing my 'self' against, which was too thick for me to get through when there were drugs around.

Keeping a dream diary and attempting to watch the process of falling asleep also helped with the whole scene. I should probably start that again, but I have to wake up to an alarm these days, which makes it a lot harder.
 
 
Tim Tempest
02:13 / 09.11.05
Well, I'm not any cannabis or hallucinagens, but I am on some meds for OCD...

I'll look into this, and I'll give I.M.P. a go though.
 
 
JohnnyDark
18:53 / 10.11.05
Two words: Vitamin. B.

(OK, one word and a letter..)
 
 
matthew.
02:00 / 11.11.05
Since October 25th of this year, I have been writing in a Dream Journal. I've never had a problem remembering my dreams, but I still forget them a couple days later. This way I can freeze them for all time.

I hope to use them in my fiction... That's why I do it.
 
 
Tim Tempest
02:19 / 11.11.05
Is Lucid dreaming any...I don't know...healthy/less healthy than normal dreaming?

I'll have to come back and reword that question to sound more coherent.
 
 
electric monk
12:46 / 11.11.05
Two words: Vitamin. B.

Could you expand on this, please?
 
 
Axolotl
14:04 / 11.11.05
Alternatively if you've been smoking weed long term giving up can have a huge impact on your dreams. I recently gave up after having smoked daily for 2 or 3 years and was rewarded by some incredibly vivid dreams.
My dream recall is also up, so would second the earlier advice from above.
 
 
Sekhmet
14:47 / 11.11.05
Two words: Vitamin. B.

Could you expand on this, please?

Monk, I think ze is referring to the apparently beneficial effect that taking vitamin B has on lucid dreaming. I haven't tested it myself, but my husband swears by it, as well as the not-smoking-weed thing.

Every time I've become lucid it's been the result of conducting the following test: pinch your nose closed with your fingers, and then try to breathe through it. If you can still breathe, you're dreaming. Just get in the habit of doing this occasionally throughout the day.
 
 
electric monk
14:49 / 11.11.05
Cool! Thanks Sekhmet. That's a new one on me.
 
 
JohnnyDark
09:52 / 12.11.05
Sorry, monk & sekhmet, wasn't trying to be obscure.. this came up on a thread a while ago...

I started taking Vitamin B because of its supposed benefits in repelling mosquitoes (no, really - after several weeks of consuming it, the body is supposed to metabolise a trace, natural insect repellent) when I was getting ready for a holiday to Vetnam a year or two ago. I had to stop because I couldn't get a decent night's sleep, the dreams were so vivid. It's not that I didn't enjoy them but it was just leaving me knackered the next day. Quite a few people I've spoken to have had this experience with Vit B but I don't know if it holds for everyone. I was taking a bog standard (UK) high street Vitamin B1 brand called Benerva (100mg). I'd highly recommend it to anyone who wishes to increase dream intensity and recall.

I also used to find, when I was a much more regular smoker, that I had a 'dream boom' when leaving off the herb for a day and most people I know have had this. It was great fun but it only lasted a night or two.
 
 
Unconditional Love
12:23 / 12.11.05
Another way if you have the luxury, an most do on saturday or at least sunday, is upon waking to resleep, catch yourself coming out of sleep into wakefulness and then lay back into sleep, back into dreamland, much easier to do when the world is cold and bed is so warm.
 
 
akira
13:10 / 12.11.05
Quantum
Visualise your dreams as cows, and milk them for gallons of lucidity in your dream dairy- then you can have lucid creams. *hahahaha*

Everytime I do that I have a nightmare and I-scream.
 
  
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