So I am very interested on the natural cues (external and internal) in order for me to reach the 2nd attention.
Since I was about 12 or 13 yo I been aware of Lucid Dreaming. But never had the guidance on how to do it. I always have try it before going to sleep. For the next 20 years this was the experience I had every single time:
I am laying in my bed facing up. I used to close my eyes (I do not now days) I start to concentrate in my breathing. My body keeps relaxing. ***At one point the body will ask you to move by making you feel tired on one side and you get the urge to move, also you will fill tingles or itchy, you have to*** avoid all that and remain still. At this point what is happening is, that your body is falling asleep while your brain stay active and all of that are ***signals from the body to the brain. ***Pass the point of my body being an ass hehehe, I start to feel a lot ***lighter ( like I am leaving my body). Then at this point this happens: I start to fall asleep, but is not the same is like I go out and come back, like I am in the **middle, I have some images in which only twice (happened recently) I was able to understand and actually remember what it was. The thing is that when ***images comes in and I notice, I try to make sense of it, and the more sense i am trying to make the further it goes away. Until I fall "Asleep"(or something else). At this point i am in my room or somewhere else, I get ***scare because I think someone is ***behind the door, I force myself to wake up or move but I cant, I intent really hard until i wake up... Realizing I am in another dream and I have to do the same. Normally I fall back to sleep after I do wake up in reality (or I think it is reality hahahahaah).
This next part is the one I am experimenting...
For many years when I am performing any job that has some type of repetition i.e last weekend i was building a home, nail by nail. I had to go up a ladder and down multiple times a day. Another example is waking up every morning to do Physical fitness (Army job)... So when repetition (specially a new activity) comes into my life, I have experience that at night I will have a sequence of images while "dreaming"that is related to the job I am doing at the time. The curious thing is that this dreams are not pleasant... using the same examples is like... Army: I will dream that I was late for formation, or that I was in vacation and the flight got cancel, etc.
Why is it important to mention that the dream is not pleasant? because it is the same feeling I had before when I am in my room (dreaming) and i feel someone is in the other side of the door. I notice this similar feeling this past weekend after working with nail, hammer, and wood all day when I "felt asleep".
On that night I went to sleep with the idea of trying to do Lucid Dreaming, so I started the same procedures I take..... then... BANGGGG I am in the dream but not fully LUCID, I was dreaming the I was in the ladder like earlier that day, and I felt the same sensation... this time the feeling is not of someone behind the door, but the feeling I am about to fall. What I do.... force myself to wake up because I got scare.... THEN...
I came to realization and the purpose of this post... how about if I force to think of actually falling from the ladder. I started doing it. At the point that when I was asleep dreaming, I was not scare anymore, I was joyful just jumping of the building or ladder. Never hit the floor, It actually repeat it a couple of times until I don't remember more... I guess I finally felt to sleep.
I know some people have the same experiences, This is what I ask others to do and let me know. If you feel you have someone behind your door, and you actually wake up. As you laying down I want you to re-create that scene that scared you and start to open the door, or jump of the building etc. FORCE IT!!!!
I have not LUCID DREAM using this technique but I am going to give it more emphases to see what happen. My goal is to LUCID DREAM on command (on demand).
***Cues to observe**
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Just, as a safety precaution, it probably isn't a great idea to suggest jumping off buildings to test for lucidity.
In the event you confuse waking and sleeping and, well, end up jumping off a building.
Probably better to prove lucidity first, and then play.
But, confronting fear? I agree. I think that's a very powerful move in many ways. I'd absolutely go with opening yourself up to the fear. Really let yourself feel it. Embrace it. Encourage it.
Wrap yourself up in the fear till it's nearly ecstatic. If you're on the ladder, and you can feel that fear making your back hot like you're going to fall, grasp hard to the ladder, let the fear wash over you, know both that you aren't going to fall, while feeling you might.
It's an interesting exercise. Our feelings, after all, are not us. If we know we're not going to fall, but feel like we're going to fall, it begs the question. Why?
Is there an IOB there trying to make contact with you? Is it just on the edge of your perception and reaching out through gut feeling? There, in the crack of the corner of your eye... right around the door, around the edge of the hallway, just over the hill, just around the corner.
Fear is a fascinating thing. Of course if you're me, the thing you were fearing then becomes what you're seeking and wouldn't ya know, the fear just goes poof. xD
Thanks for the observations!!!! I definitely will pay attention to those cues next time.
The TM people call that "stress relief".
It's common when practicing that simple method to interrupt the internal dialogue (Aing... Aing... Aing...) that you have "visions" of any repetitive stressful activity during the day.
I had a job blowing glass back in the 70s. The daily quota was 40 pieces, but being an "impeccable warrior", I produced 200 a day.
Pissing off the rest of the crew. The boss told me to cut it out, or a bunch of people might get laid off.
To do that, I had to work like a ballet, every movement timed perfectly.
The result was, I'd actually visually see the molten glass spinning around on the lathe, when I meditated.
I was in waking dreaming!
Of course, the TM people taught me to ignore that, like an idiot!
I suspect, you could classify this effect as "not-doing", which has a positive effect on lucid dreaming practice, because it moves the assemblage point a bit, making it more flexible.
Or, it makes unused emanations glow. And those help lucidity.
The idea about not moving because the body is falling asleep and gets an itching sensation, is not uncommon.
During silence practice with eyes closed, in a chair, if you start to itch like hell, you know you're making progress.
Scratching the itch ruins it.
You have to suffer through it, and then you realize, it was only for 20 or 30 seconds, not the several hours it seemed like. Then it goes away, and bliss replaces it.
Nyei might have discovered this. In a video she says sleeping on the stomach helps lucid dreaming.
Maybe it mostly keeps you from turning on your side, and spoiling the movement of your assemblage point into lucid sleep?
nice!! I am going to try sleeping on the stomach.
Thinking about it, most of the time that I dream the most vivid is when I fall asleep during the daytime and most of the time is on my stomach (normally is when i just lunch to bed and fall asleep). I always wake up with a sluber of saliva.... hahhaahah
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There is a whole technology of how to work with such states and explain it clearly.
Nothing terrible happens. You enter a dreaming by waiting for your body to fall asleep, and the brain at this moment begins to generate mental images (in fact, it also falls asleep). These images can be used to get into a lucid dream, but it is not necessary to do it, because microsleep "breaks" the brain (in the morning there are no problems with it). Then you fall asleep, and later you wake up in a false awakening. Sometimes you find yourself in a sleepy stupor, from which you can leave the body, and it is better to look at your hands. If the hands are "transparent" (invisible with internal subtle illumination), then you are in an out-of-body experience, if the hands seem ordinary, this is a dream of awakening (false awakening but with awareness). Etc. We can make out the experience to the smallest detail, and methodically know what to do next for each type of dream. All this is at our disposal.
There is no one outside the door. This is a projection of fear. Quite a typical situation for sleep paralysis.
Looking at your hands is the best reality check. You don't have to jump anywhere - it's stupid! You can just sit on the bed and wait, the dream will show itself soon.
These are the types of dreaming I spoke about. These are different states, they require different practices.
1.An intense dream is an ordinary dream in which the level of experience is so high that it is not a problem to remember it in the morning. But the recalled dream is not a "lucid dream", but at the peak of the experience it can create conditions for the emergence of self-awareness.
A lucid dream is a state in which you understand where you are and have self-awareness. Active imagination prevails as a creative impulse and mental production as a building material for the content of a dream, therefore this type of experience is often compared to an interactive “mental constructor”.
A controlled dream is a stable dream in which self-consciousness is present, but what is perceived is not controlled by the imagination and does not demonstrate a direct intervention of thinking in the construction of space as an integral field of interaction between elements of the dream content. This type of dream is divided into three subtypes: archetypal, other "worlds" in the form of interactive stories, synthesized from memory.
A waking dream is a dream that begins with the act of waking up (not necessarily in your own bedroom). It differs from "false awakening" in that here you are aware of the state in which you find yourself.
Dreaming outside the body (out-of-body experience) by a clear set of characteristics, when there is a literally perceived separation from the physical body in the "second body" and entering the "second state" as closely as possible combined with the world of reality, where the sleeping body is located (therefore, the room situation coincides, time of day, body on bed, etc.).
In general, there are 5 steps "jump of awareness". They are very visual when entering a dreaming.
Physiological effects. Discharge of tension in the retina of the eyes, body tension, casual emotions...
Thoughts flying past the observer.
Mental image. Images that can be enhanced with your attention.
Forms of perception. Various kinds of experiences in perception. They are often linked to mental projections.
Energetically forms that are accessible to pure consciousness. The most distant level for awareness.
Are we tracking these effects and levels? Or do we mix, confusing them with each other? How often do we mistake one level for another?