Lucid Dreaming?

Heyya guys! 'Sup? Now I wanna talk about lucid dreaming. Since I got myself in 'Stumble' I always come across websites discussing it and how you can achieve it instead of waiting for it naturally.

Let me give you a bit of introduction. From The Lucidity Insititute, "lucid dreaming means dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming", in other words, you know that you are dreaming and it's not real, happening in the physical world. It can happen in the middle of the dream, or from the start of it. You know that it is just a dream from clues in the dream or you just know it without any clues.

Maybe if I find myself slam dunking, it's actually a dream? Will I be able to outslam dunk Jordan in my dream? hahaha

Anyway, after doing a lot of readings (online of course) on this subject, I thought, might as well give it a try huh. Oh, before I forgot, lucid dreaming doesn't mean you are given the full control of your dream. Sometimes you have little control too. And you can be dreaming and having full control without knowing that it's actually not real. I hope that makes sense =P

So, yeah, I thought I should give it a try, this lucid dreaming. I tried this

The Carlos Casteneda approach for inducing lucid dreaming (“Journey to Ixtlan”)

1) Sit in your bed, and tell yourself that you are leaving behind the cares and concerns of the day, and are becoming more settled.
2) Look softly at your hands, and as you do so, tell yourself in a caring manner that, “Tonight while I am dreaming, I will see my hands and realize that I am dreaming.”
3) Continue to softly look at your hands and mentally repeat the affirmation, “Tonight while I am dreaming, when I see my hands, I will realize that I am dreaming.”
4) Don’t be bothered if your eyes cross, or you begin to get tired, remain at peace and continue to repeat slowly and gently your intent to become lucid.
5) After about five minutes or once you feel too tired or sleepy, quietly end the practice.
6) Gently remind yourself of your intention to see your hands in a dream and then realize that you are dreaming, and go to sleep.
7) When you wake up in the middle of the night, gently recall your intention to see your hands and realize that you are dreaming. Try to remember your last dream; did you see your hands?
Followed faithfully each night ( with a welcoming mental atmosphere ), you should have a lucid dream within the first week – maybe after only one or two nights!
9) When it happens, and suddenly you see your hands in your dreams and you make the connection, “This is a dream!”, try to stay calm and explore the dream environment. Later, when you wake from your lucid dream, take a moment and write it down in your dream journal — write the entire dream; how you realized you were dreaming; what you did while aware that you were dreaming, etc. Congratulations!

Waggoner, Robert, An Introduction to Inducing Lucid Dreams. http://www.dreaminglucid.com/introinduce.html)

and this

1 ) Lay comfortably on your back and close your eyes

2 ) Do not move your body and try not to move your eyes

You will get urges to move, ignore them !

3 ) Wait and concentrate on the breathing.

We are tricking the brain to think that the body is dreaming. If you ignore the urges the brain will think that you are asleep and will activate the safety body paralysis to protect you from moving around and hurting yourself while dreaming.

4 ) When this happens you can finally separate from your paralyzed-physical body

The problem with the separation process is that the 2 bodies are merged and you don't know witch one is the astral. If you try to move your physical body everything will mess up and you might “wake up” in paralyzed.

I have experienced this, it only lasts like 10 seconds but it is Scarry Shit...

So how can you know which one is the right one ?

Here is one simple trick :

Don't try to move and just visualize that you have new set of arms or legs. And since you are in the Astral world they will be created for you. Now you know that those arms are part of your astral(dream) body and you can move them withoud being afraid of waking up in the stupid paralysis.

Do the same for the legs

5 ) Congratulations you've done it !

Its time to take control, now you can do anything you desire.

http://dreamastral.blogspot.com/2009/01/6-simple-steps-to-astral-projection-and.html

The first one is pretty hard and I haven't managed to get it yet. But the second one seems alright. Though the methods described are meant to control dream rather than letting yourself know that you are dreaming, one of the comments says that these are also used to lucid dream. So I thought, let's give this one a try, and I did it last night. Kinda creepy hahhaha.

As I began to feel drifting away, it felt like the bed I was lying on moved for a while. It could be my body, or the brain messing around I don't know. After some time, I heard like a voice or something saying "Carousel" or was it "Cookery". I don't remember what, but I quickly jumped out of the bed. Adik who was playing game at the time was startled because of that. =P

And every time I felt like drifting away to the dream world, there was something or some voices echoing. Kinda creepy but not scary enough. Hahaha.

Here is a video about lucid dreams. You will get better understanding what the heck it's all about. If you are giving it a try, please let me know your experience.

hehehehe...