Increasing awareness and lucidity

[shedt]

What tips would you suggest to strengthening your awareness, lucidity and such while having a lucid dream ?

I've read that looking at your hands is a good method.

What methods do you use ?

take care,
-Shawn

[Xap]

Hi Shawn,

Alex gives some great advice there. In addition, regular energy work (like NEW) helps me a lot in increasing the overall level of lucidity in my dreams and the frequency of projection-related phenomena.

Happy flying!

Xap

[Nazerel]

I read somewhere that spinning was a good way to regain lucidity while dreaming. I tried this during a lucid dream a few weeks ago, and it seemed to work for a few seconds, but then I tried jumping through a window and woke up soon after.

Keeping calm seems to be the best way to hold lucidity, but this is often very difficult at times; I suppose practice can help with this.

[shedt]

oh yes I remember reading that too, spinning.

i think i tried that once in a lucid dream. i was only lucid for a short while in this dream.. which turned into a dream and i was talking to a Buddha.

It was really interesting dream which had a "bullet time" effect in it. i remember jump/diving through a glass window, before speaking with a Buddha. I'm not saying it was/is a Buddha, but in my dream it was. I wish I could remember what it was saying to me :(

oh well, maybe next time eh! :lol:

[Dsmoke]

For me, spinning is a method of transportation. It could possibly increase my lucidity, but the scene will have changed. It's a handy method for going somewhere else instantaneously.

To increase lucidity, I usually just yell, "INCREASE LUCIDITY NOW!" Works wonders for me :)

[QuiesPhasmatis]

For me I've only spun around like that during a normal dream. Something made me remember to try spinning, but I guess it wasn't enough to make me lucid. In any account it did extend the dream, but it was also like a whole new dream because I was in a different place. I'll have to try it the next time I have a lucid dream to see the difference.

[Kalonek]

Hi ! A technic I found by personal experience which helps to keep lucidity AND stability to the LD (I mean, it prevents too from "overlucidity" which is very common and makes you wake up). It's really simple : as soon as you feel you are loosing lucidity or becoming "overlucid", look quickly around you to find something written. Anything, the text in itself is not important, it's just the fact of reading. In many cases, you won't even understand what is written (letters put together without sense). As soon as you have read the text, find another one (a car plate or what you can find). I find that it works VERY well. Since i have discovered this tip, i can stay as long as i wan't in LD.

In fact i even try to take a newspaper with me in my lucid dreams now, so that if I feel my lucidité is decreasing or becoming too present, i immediately read something.

[knightlight]

wow thats cool! Not a bad idea.

[Kalonek]

My theory about it is that by this way you push you subconscious mind to create a text that you can read, and therefore you give him a little more "power" and energy. Thus, the whole dream stabilizes and it prevents you from waking up (while keeping full lucidity).

[Lion]

My theory about it is that by this way you push you subconscious mind to create a text that you can read, and therefore you give him a little more "power" and energy. Thus, the whole dream stabilizes and it prevents you from waking up (while keeping full lucidity).

There's something about going to sleep on a fantasy. I remember some old, Merry Melodies type cartoons where orphans go to Toy Land in their dreams. Heartfelt feelings are important. Paying attention to your thoughts is no easier than studying a bland encyclopedia with no pictures. Emotion is the secret ingredient that holds your interest, and energy follows focus. :wink:

[Chris]

The best technique I have discovered is to stamp my feet and clap my hands as hard as I can. The stimulus produced seems to overpower the increasing stimulus from my physical body and so the dream environment becomes dominant and the physical fades.
I've used this technique to create WILDS whilst visualising environments too.

[astralspinner]

I've found that meditating reinforces LD practice pretty well - I used reality checks through the day and other methods & managed to induce LDs a number of times. But they were always just dreams - I was never as 'awake' as I'd have liked, everything was too fuzzy.

But the lucid dreams I've had without even trying since taking up meditating have blown every other method away - far higher levels of awareness. In fact, in my last LD I felt so wide-awake that I made a deliberate effort to wake myself up & couldn't, because I was already fully awake within the dream! Plus it lasted a lot longer - instead of the annoying "Hey, this is a dream! Zzzzzzz..." that some other methods caused, I've been able to hold recent LDs for significant lengths of time, and control them a lot better too.

[Tombo]

Telling myself that the whole enviroment is just a mental construct helps me gain awarness and control. Looking at the hands as well as tring to meditate within a LD as well. talking to mayself helps also. Unfortunately I often do not take the time to increase my awereness properly :roll:

Good thread! hopefully I will increase my awarness more from now on.......haven't found the perfect methode yet.

[star]

I have only had a few lucid dreams. What works for me is snapping my fingers. I want to fly 'snap'

Different setting 'snap'

so on.

[kevstar]

I just yell out, "Give me clarity!" I used to spin around, but then it stopped working as well.

And one way to drop clarity like a rock for me is sex. It's too bad, too.

[Psi]

Your a human, and have primal instinct. Your primary instinct is to eat, sleep, and have sex. That's all. Humans are made to reproduce and pass on their genes. If someone had a dream where a nude of the opposite sex who was attractive, outside of the immediate family, and managed to -not- wind up having sex with them, I'd be very impressed.

Update: I salute you Krev...

[kevstar]

Psi, you may be impressed, because I have done it. I won't say it was easy, and I won't say it's the norm, but I have certainly done it a few times. I was very proud of myself.

Your a human, and have primal instinct. Your primary instinct is to eat, sleep, and have sex. That's all. Humans are made to reproduce and pass on their genes. If someone had a dream where a nude of the opposite sex who was attractive, outside of the immediate family, and managed to -not- wind up having sex with them, I'd be very impressed.

Update: I salute you Krev...

There are situations in life that create an overwrite of this instinct. It's not a good thing. What happens is sex releives the energy body of bad energy, but in the process depletes good energy. To counter-balance this energy raising should be done every day. once the right balance is found this no longer becomes a problem.

[Psi]

There are situations in life that create an overwrite of this instinct. It's not a good thing. What happens is sex releives the energy body of bad energy, but in the process depletes good energy.

And what tell me are the effects of not raising energy to counter this supposed "problem"?

[Hegemony]

I've had plenty of dreams with sexual content or nudity and I didn't act upon it. I guess my views on sex are very different than most people, but I'm not a slave to it nor do I fear it. You see plenty of food but you don't eat it all, correct?

There are situations in life that create an overwrite of this instinct. It's not a good thing. What happens is sex releives the energy body of bad energy, but in the process depletes good energy.

And what tell me are the effects of not raising energy to counter this supposed "problem"?

Overt tiredness, groggy mind, inability to use energy practices, extreme emotion.

Keep in mind that the body naturally brings energy in without energy raising, however I was speaking of people who are overtly sexually active above.