Sunday, March 19, 2006

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/dreams-faq/lucid-dreaming-faq/

Lucid dreams, interesting. Me, being the curious ferret I am tried it out as soon as I read it. Astonishing results, considering that it was my first attempt and a half assed attempt at that.

I have been studying about dreams for a while so a few of the techniques for inducing it made sense to me. Following some of the techniques featured, I managed to get into a somewhat controlled dream. Kinda like when you just learnt swimming, you manage to swim a little then sink and then you start swimming again.

I mainly used the thirst technique plus a little of the others. In my first dream, i did not realise that i had already entered into a dream state. In that dream ( lets call it alpha dream incase of confusion) I was actually trying to induce my mind into a Lucid dream. Amazing thing is that, in alpha, i ACTUALLY managed to induce a lucid dream! ( Dream Beta). I used the RC (reality check, read the article) of Water. That is, telling myself that I will know I am dreaming once i see any form of liquid thats meant for cunsumption. In Alpha, I went into Beta where i saw this evian water ad (yes, strange eh) whereby I managed to tell that I am dreaming, therefore i have control over everything. In beta, once i knew i was actually dreaming, the scenerio changed from the water Ad into this vague place where my family was having a reunion dinner of sorts. I knew i could do anything i wanted then, so what did I do? Being the attention whore i am , i called over my sister to show off. I pulled my head right off my shoulders and held it in my arms. Then i connected it back. Feeling omnipotent suddenly, i tried an even bigger stunt. I went to this corridoor in the building and then i cracked the earth into 2. Yes i literally split the earth before joining it back together. At this juncture, i left beta and went back into alpha again. In alpha, i was only semi conscious. I did the RC of checking the time on a clock, turning away then looking at it again. However, being in alpha, and wanting to believe that Beta was the actual dream and not alpha ( i didnt not know alpha was a dream then) my subconcious kept the times same. Seeing as the time was the same i was convinced that alpha wasnt a dream and proceeded to try enter another Lucid dream from alpha which failed. then i woke up.


Couple of curious things to note:

I entered from Alpha into Beta twice. However, it might have been because i was already in a dream, therefore wanting to enter into a Lucid dream state from that dream was much easier. (being in alpha made whatever i wanted to do infinately possible).

Secondly, I barely had control over my actions in alpha except maybe for the RC and the attempt to enter lucid dreaming. That was ALL the awareness i had.

In Beta, i did NOT have complete control too. The setting was not of my choice, though i knew i was dreaming then and was actively "conscious" of the fact of what I had tried to do and what i actually managed to achieve, abeit from alpha instead of from the real world. My actions, seemed somehow driven though, by another force, not that which is my conscious. I suspect that it is what most people would call our subconscious, our true nature, true self.

Concluding, this phenomena excites the hell out of me. Trust me that i will be doing much more experimentation in a much more disciplined attempts.

(NOTE: While i agree with most of their methods of dream inducing methods, alot of the hokey pokey stuff like out of body experiences, seeing the future, seeing places u never been to and meeting someone who has also induced a lucid dream. These i am skeptical about. However, if you read back on my entries, my experience in Taiwan has caught my curiousity about the out of body experience bit. We shall see what my future attempts hold)

Hello blog, hows it been. Feeling lonely out here? Me too.

Life, many a great philosopher have pondered over it. Greater meanings, life after death. In fact I seriously suspect religion was created sorely due to the insecurity towards life. The fragility, the futility of life. Oh how am I guilty of this..

I create a whirlwind of activity around myself, I plan my futures, work crazy long hours, do the things which I so very love. And yet when everything settles and I look back into my very soul. There lies an emptiness, a coldness that jarrs me to my bones, a gaping chasm that cant seem to be fufiled no matter what. Is this the very state that drives man towards the notion of divinity so very many years ago? That we see ourselves as so minute, so inconsequential that we have to conceptualise Greater Beings that in turn give us meanings? We give meaning to nothingness that it may give us meaning. How tragically ironical that the greatest gift our mind (awareness) gives us is also our greatest mental barrier.

To an outsider, I am the prodigal son, walking back on the right path headed towards a sterling future, fufiling my potential. However, inside me, nothing seems to have changed much. Its all a sham i tell you, a sham. Once a sonofabitch cynic, always will be one.


Heaved down my baggage and looked around,
Cut stones and wet marshes, not a sound.
I see the silence and hear the fog,
Mind and heart tumbling back in one accord.
Memories of roads travelled unraveled,
Ashes of tears; songs of sorrow; Tears of joy; throbs of love.
Paths once clear, now fields of dust.
Turned my shoulders walking on ..

'The weary man'