[quote=“The Eye, post:20, topic:2366”]I thanked the “force” behind the lucid dream and as soon as I was about to think about my next move, my sight got blury. I knew what it meant so I began shouting, rubbing my hands, even banging the doors of a truck which was there but nothing could do shit to keep the LD stable.
So all became dark and vanished.[/quote]
I call that Lucid Introversion. Everything requires your attention to exist in a dream. The moment you realize you are dreaming, all that attention that is evenly distributed to sustain your dream world retreats back into your head, focusing on what lucidity means and what you want to do with it. That doesn’t leave enough attention to sustain the dream.
I rely on intense physical movement. Sprinting, jumping, flying, anything intense. In order to run, you need your first point of reference, which is you. You need a second point of reference, the ground, and the third point of reference is your destination. If you want to sustain a 3D world, you need 3 points of reference. You can’t have intense movement without those 3 reference points, so intense movement will naturally spread your attention out in a way which will sustain the dream.
I used to always fly to stabilize dreams. The problem is that I always got so carried away with flying, I never got a chance to do anything else other than fly. Now I like to use a good sprint.
I’m in the same boat trying to gain proficiency at AP’ing at will, so it’s been interesting for me reading this thread thus far.
It’s been quite frustrating for me as the skills necessary for AP seem so slippery, so many things can go wrong and sidetrack the original intent. It’s somewhat common for me to fall asleep and dream that I’ve become lucid, or dream that I’m trying to become lucid. “So close, yet so far.” And then once in a blue moon I’ll spontaneously become lucid for no discernible reason as to why or how.
As for TheEye’s experience of feeling astral arms I’ve had something similar: I was just on the verge of waking when I felt a clear physical sensation of my hand crawling like a spider or like Thing from the Addams Family. Shocked, I woke and stared at my hand, which lay still as a corpse.
Robert Bruce seems to think that doing energy work makes achieving AP a lot easier and it’s something I’ve started recently, which could explain some of the astral energy sensations I’ve been getting.
p.s. The Eye: Have you tried taking Galantine again lately?
@The Cusp : thanks for your post which helps a lot.
I thought that rubbing hands, shouting, crawling, any motion able to keep astral senses sustained would suffice. So this isnt true ? I have to do a more engaging motion such as flying or sprinting ?
@Alan : I’ve quit with Galantamine. It is fun at the start of the journey to give you a kind of preview of what an OBE is like. But the more you improve in your journey the more you realise that OBE resulting from Galantamine are unstable. Ok you could tell me that last night LD was instable as well even if I didnt take Galantamine, but my best OBE have all been natural with no aid at all from any complement.
And yeah Alan, I can feel your frustration. Let me copy&past a post I wrote elsewhere :
"[i]ll tell you what’s a pain in the ass. It is when your general awareness increases in your dreams without allowing you to become lucid (and then astral project).
2 very recent examples :
a) dreamt that an old african was going to move in at my place (when I talked to that dream in detail to my vodou teacher he identified the Lwa).
So, when we decided we were going to live together at my place, I immediately thought in my dream “ok that’s great, but how will I be able to keep on doing my vodou services without this person being aware of it ? Hmm… ok I can do all my services to spirits in my bedroom with the closed door, but… what about my altar in my closet ??”.
I brought in my dreams memory from my waking life and was thinking as I would have thought when I’m awake, but still I wasnt lucidly aware.
b) dreamt that I was with my father and another person who passed away.
Instead of telling to myself “wait, that person is dead so I must be dreaming” (like you read on all lucid dreaming forums), I told to that deceased person without becoming lucid : “oh you’re there ! since you’re dead, are you an illusion here or real ?”. In this case again I brought in my dream memory from my waking life without being able to use it to become lucidly aware.
Both those cases are standard now to me, and believe me, when I wake up, I’m very very VERY annoyed"[/i]
TheEye: I definitely understand regarding those dreams with so much potential for lucidity, but somehow the full awareness is just not there for it to happen. Such dreams have become common for me as well.
I had a similar dream a week ago in which my Uncle who’s passed away showed up. Except in my dream I was aware that he had died, yet somehow I never used that knowledge to become lucid! Instead I dreamt that we shook hands and said our farewell – something I hadn’t been able to do in real life. (Some might think that I’d actually met the spirit of my Uncle, but I think this is a case of ordinary dream where all the characters are projections of my subjective mind. I’ve had dream visits from entities and they differ in feel and the degree, or lack of, influence your mind has on them.)
Nice that you’re off of Galantamine. I’ve had the best result on the second day after having taken it, but each time the results were less and less. And I’ve only took them once per week, three times total. My body seems to build tolerance rather fast. Oh well.
[quote=“The Eye, post:23, topic:2366”]@The Cusp : thanks for your post which helps a lot.
I thought that rubbing hands, shouting, crawling, any motion able to keep astral senses sustained would suffice. So this isnt true ? I have to do a more engaging motion such as flying or sprinting ?[/quote]
The hand rubbing thing is a distorted echo of the original. It actually originated in Castaneda’s books, where Castaneda was instructed to find his hands in a dream. Any artist knows hands are the hardest thing to draw, which means they will also be difficult to recreate properly in a dream. This results in inconsistencies. Those inconsistencies draw your attention, amplifying them (like a tooth dream, more attention you give something, more related detail it creates). It was originally a reality check, but got distorted along the way into an inefficient stabilization technique.
As you wake from a lucid, often you will transition into the void. There is only one point of reference in the void, which is you. To progress from there, you need a second point of reference. You can’t have movement without something else to move relative to.
Most common stabilization techniques I’ve seen only cover one or two points of reference, but you need 3. Intense movement implicitly involves 3 reference points.
@The Cusp : This is very clear, thanks a lot. I will try to run somewhere next time I become lucid.
What I might do next time as well is what has been successful already : as soon as I become lucid I dont stay in the dream, I immediately switch in the RTZ/astral plane. Doing so allow you to skip the need for your mind to keep the dream world active.
Oh, and one comment : from what happened last night, seems that the advice given by Charlie Morley to “give love and gratitude to the force behind the LD to increase its lenght&stability” does not work.
@Alan Seems that we share commonalities !
Yeah, trouble with Galantamine is that even with just one prescription a week your mind gets accustomed very quickly and the dramatic effects you have at the beginning fade very quicky.
Dreaming that I’m with a friend. Then a dude eyeballs my friend, so I tell him
is that guy eyeballing you ?
yeah, he replies
you know that here you can do what you want ? For instance you can create a ball a fire like that and throw it to him !
really ? my buddy asks
yeah ! I reply
and then I open my hand to manifest a ball a fire. My buddy looks at my hand and say :
dude, there’s nothing…
I look at my hand and I see no ball of fire so I think “this is odd, I thought I could create anything…”
In all that dream I WASNT LUCIDLY AWARE !! I was just in a passive dream state even if I was thinking like I would have if I had been in the waking state.
do you realize how many times a week I tell myself I’m just dreaming in a dream? you realize how long it’s been since I went lucid? a fucking while. I hate dream logic.
Had a very similar dream this morning where I ‘knew’ I could create a machine gun like it was the most natural thing in the world - but still no lucidity. Frustratings is right. But I just finished up six months of rune work Saturday so I find myself with -lots- of time to re-allocate all of a sudden. Time to get back in the swing of things dreamwise, and this evocation journey just might be the perfect time, I bet lucid dreaming with spirits involved will be really rewarding.
[quote=“The Eye, post:27, topic:2366”]I look at my hand and I see no ball of fire so I think “this is odd, I thought I could create anything…”
In all that dream I WASNT LUCIDLY AWARE !! I was just in a passive dream state even if I was thinking like I would have if I had been in the waking state.
How dumb is this ?![/quote]
That’s going to happen, but in my book that’s just as good as lucidity. That’s where I do most of my practice, in not really lucid dreams that are the result of intense focus on one subject. If your regular dreams are about using dream control, you are doing something right.
Being lucid just gives you the opportunity to redirect your dream. It’s kind of pointless if you got your dream right the first time through incubation.
Lucidity without control does not interest me. My aim is either to astral project or to lucid dream as a gateway to astral projection.
Therefore, all those examples I gave in the past posts of dreams were my awareness was sharp without being able to control the dream are very annoying to me.
I have some important magic and spiritual work to accomplish and to be able to accomplish those goals I have to become both lucid and in control.
I can’t resist to post this. This is hilarious. From a skiller APer :
“For example, I’ve been able to revisit previous lives by simply asking to be in one while There. One of my favorites is I asked “What was my first life on Earth” I fully expected to be some sort of caveman making grunts. Instead I experienced (during the OBE) being a chicken in a barn. I can hear a group of watchers saying “Don’t look at the horse!” I decide to look at the horse anyway. I get stomped on and taste the salty blood. I hear an uproar of laughter from the watchers as this is happening.”
[quote=“The Eye, post:33, topic:2366”]I can’t resist to post this. This is hilarious. From a skiller APer :
I can hear a group of watchers saying “Don’t look at the horse!” I decide to look at the horse anyway. I get stomped on and taste the salty blood. I hear an uproar of laughter from the watchers as this is happening."[/quote]
Now that sets off red flags for me. Anything that directs your attention like that with seeming skill is suspect in my book. That’s a perfect example of having your own attention used against you.
That wasn’t a past life, that was dream combat. Someone or something used a successful gambit against the dreamer. Sounds like they were quite proud of themselves too. I would have laughed as well.
[quote=“The Cusp, post:34, topic:2366”]Found a great example of the kind of stabilization I was talking about earlier in my old dream journal. I really had to work for this one
[url=http://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/the+cusp/swimming-physics-42541/]http://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/the+cusp/swimming-physics-42541/[/url][/quote]
Interesting, thanks.
However, the more I think about the tip (running/flying) the more I tell myself that I dont want just to Forrest Gump so that the dream doesnt fade
Next time I get lucid AND in control (lol) I will switch to the RTZ/astral plane immediatly without waiting for a sec. Hopefully it should become less difficult to maintain the xp stable.
