use of mirrors in lucid dreams

[stargazer]

I stumbled accidentally upon the benefit of mirrors in lucid dreams.

I was having a very ordinary dream about dancing ballet and I seemed to be simultaneously watching or videotaping myself dancing, or watching myself in the mirror. As I watched myself dance, I became simultaneously aware of having an effect on my motions and that self-awareness served to rocket me to lucidity. The effect this has on me is usually to make me feel pretty giddy, like a kid in school, which no doubt hurts the lucidity too but it feels so darn cool.

Anyways, after that any lucid dreams I had, I would run to a mirror. Watching myself in the mirror, with an occasional quick glance at the hands before they start melting, served to extend the avg time of lucidity from.. waking mere seconds after going lucid, to being lucid for several minutes and even lapsing back into a dream. (Which had never happened to me before) It's hard to fight the giddy reaction though, and the urge to make faces at myself. Also, I noticed that one night my reflection looked very tired and sickly indeed so I didn't really try to play around, because the reflection was also indicative of how I was feeling that day.

Anyways, it was then that I started reading here in the forum about the use of mirrors in lucid dreams to help turn it into an OBE. I was intrigued by this.. I had tried Robert Bruce's shopping mall method before and only lapsed back into dreaming, getting too distracted by the feeling that I was on a mission at the mall that wasn't associated with OBE-ing. I just think I'd have better luck with mirrors since I already associate that with lucidity.

So... if I understand this correctly... you look in a mirror, envision some scenery in it, then step through into the scenery? Anything else that you need to do?

[Matthew]

I've used the mirror method for about five years now...not sure where I picked it up from. I have to admit that I am probably not getting the full potential out of it.
In the average dream, I become lucid and then go hunting for a mirror (although once I couldn't find a mirror, so I jumped up and down on the floorboards of the house I was in until the floor started to sink under the weight. Then, I leaped into a crack between the floor and the wall. This did the trick, too.) Once I find the mirror, I grab the edges and pull myself through it. Once on the other side, I experience usually a few different phenomena. Sometimes, I will be surrounded by colors and "energetic colors" (I think these are energies that my mind can't grasp). I will usually fall through these colors and "materialize" in some different location. On other times, I will have no sight but instead feel that I am wrapped up in a cocoon. I will wrestle with this cocoon and end up opening my eyes in a different location. The energetic phenomena and level of consciousness from inhabitants has led me to believe that I am in the astral realms.
I definitely believe that I am underutilizing this method. I never look into the mirror first to see what the reflection is or even to try and visualize where I want to go. Also, I never even have a goal in mind, so I think I just end up somewhere random on the astral planes. In fact, some experiences have led me to believe that these are locations where my astral body was already floating.
Stargazer, if you experiment with directing the mirror method, please let me know how it goes. You'll probably think of some applications that I haven't.
-Matthew

[stargazer]

Thanks so much for your reply, Matthew. I'll try it out and let you know if I have any success.

[stargazer]

Well, I made an attempt this morning.. it wasn't successful, but it was definitely interesting. As a beginning OBE-er, any effort is interesting!

I found a mirror in my dream the moment I went lucid. I attempted to change what was in the reflection... at first, it would mist up and then change and it would again be my reflection, but each change improved my reflection... I looked happier, brighter, healthier, better. I expressed a desire to project and tried again, and this time was able to pull up some beautiful mountain scenery. The problem was that the scenery changed very quickly. I was looking at the mountains outside the window of a hallway of a house. This was okay to me, so I was going to try to move into the mirror, but then night fell and the hallway darkened. I tried to lighten up the hallway and the scenery shifted to a pleasant meadow. This was fine by me so I tried going in.

The mirror gave, but offered a lot of resistance. It was not easy to push through, but I did it. The thing that made it challenging is that when I moved into the mirror, I found myself in a black void, with the scenery pushed farther back as if on a screen. It was rather like entering the back of a movie theater. While the void was frustrating, I was determined to push on through towards the scenery... in spite of, yep, the mild projection vibrations I was feeling, as well as a strong and unpleasant "compressed" feeling. Something definitely changed when I went through that mirror. I also heard lots of noise/voices that sound hypnagogic in nature, they sounded like they were being played in reverse. I was pretty determined to press on towards the scenery, regardless, but woke up when I had gotten about waist in.

Not very pleasant. I think it takes too much effort to focus on scenery as well as push through... I may make another few tries, although I might try Matthew's blind mirror method (the idea I found a bit intimidating in the lucid dream) or maybe also try to find a door instead, which won't quite have the same limitations of changing scenery... I'll expect there to be a fixed scenario to step into, with the same intent to project before I step through.

[Matt]

Stuart Wilde writes about using a mirror in a lucid dream for self introspection in which you walk into the mirror then turn around and look back at yourself. I'm not sure which one of his books it's in though.

I've walked through mirrors a few times and they seem to act like teleporters. However whenever I walk through a mirror I go from being fully lucid to it just being a dream so even though I recall what I did on the other side I don't have full control of things while I'm over there.

I've noticed that if I have a mirror in a room, then when I project to the RTZ it will sometimes appear like a door, with a knob and everything. Other times it will make the walls open up into another area. Because mirrors affect the RTZ so much I've taken most of my mirrors down. If I want to see a mirror I'll use the one in the bathroom.

I've read that it's a good idea to keep mirrors you're going to walk through clean, I have a feeling that's a good idea.

[Matthew]

Interesting experience, Stargazer. I like your term "compressed." We are definitely having the same type of experience. If I wrestle with the "cocoon-like" compression, I will see an array of unidentifiable colors, feel either a falling or floating sensation, and then I will "pop" into an astral realm.
The mirror technique has always been a very powerful technique for me. But from Matt's description, it doesn't work for everyone....
Matt, what techniques have you used to go from a lucid dream to an OBE?
-Matthew

[stargazer]

Matthew, I was reading at a different astral forum and someone was saying that their technique was to find a high place, such as a cliff or a high window and to jump out of it, trying to speed their descent towards the ground. They said that it takes just seconds before their bedroom pops up around them and they're out of body, and that they've done hundreds of APs that way.

My guess on why this works is that the "falling" sensation, similar as in trance, helps slide you out of body and you transition quite quickly into your OBE. I was intrigued by this method, as I'm not scared of heights and it has more of a "can't commit halfway" quality that I like, but I'll admit it sounds intimidating as well.

Another person was saying that they looked at their melting hands, shouted "Take me to my body!", saw the environment around them shimmer and found themselves bumping noses their body, floating just above it. My problem with this method is that I don't want to wake up.. the last time I looked at melting hands, it took me back to my body and started the projection reflex but I'm not quite strong enough to sustain the reflex (something that I'm working on) and woke up in the middle of it. I'm more intrigued by gateways from the lucid.

[Matt]

Matt, what techniques have you used to go from a lucid dream to an OBE?
-Matthew

Do you mean what's a way to get from a dream area into the RTZ? The way I normally do things I exit my body and then go to a different realm by flying upward. If I want to go back to my body I still have some awareness of my physical body which I can use to return to the RTZ.

If I start out in a normal dream and become lucid, I generally have to wake up and go back to sleep again in order to get to the RTZ

[Matthew]

Stargazer,
I had a really long lucid dream last night, and I tried the "falling/flying at the ground" technique:

I was flying around when I remembered the technique, so I flew high up and then flew at the ground as fast as I could. I then promptly hit the ground. The best description I can make of what I saw was that the ground became "bigger" so that the individual particles of dirt were about an inch in diameter. I had a bit of trouble maintaining body awareness and lucidity, but I managed to pick myself up. Oddly, I was stuck on the ground after this and had trouble getting airbourne.
In recalling the dream, I can't say that I had a very noticable "falling" sensation. You know, sometimes basic sensations are there in dreams and sometimes not. Maybe I didn't feel the falling sensation strong enough to trigger the OBE.

-Matthew

[stargazer]

Matthew, you're so brave!! Yay! Thanks so much for trying this. The person who posted about this method mentioned that they used NEW to speed up their descent, but I'm not sure how that would be done. Maybe it'd help if you weren't flying to begin with, but simply jumping off a stable plane (like the edge of a cliff) and free-falling. Transitioning from a very slow, stable state to a very quick-moving state. Maybe if your brain expects vertigo, thinking that you're awake, (as opposed to a more subjective dream experience like flying?) it would feel vertigo and then pop you OOB. Still, I won't champion the method til I find out if it works or not. And I've just been too tired lately to have many lucid dreams.

Next on my list of lucid experiments is enhancing lucidity with spinning. (Supposedly something about the spinning causes the brain to pause, not wanting to transition while it's disoriented) Some people have used the spinning as a method of transportation. Me, I'm interested in combining spinning with looking at melting hands and see if I can get close to my physical body without waking up.

[Matthew]

Stargazer,
Thought I would do an experiment last night. (kind of lucky since lucid dreams don't usually come two nights in a row) I was in a car speeding down the highway. I climbed out through the roof (kind of like a ghost) and then sat on the roof. I started paying attention to how I felt. And I did feel a very strong sense of forward movement. Then I thought about what my other senses were reporting and noticed that there was no sound.
So, I'm thinking that our senses respond to where our attention is. In this case, we might need to concentrate on the falling sensation to make the "hitting the ground" technique work.
PS- I got blown off the car before I could see if concentrating on hearing would make me aware of sounds. When I hit the ground near some buildings, people were talking to me and I could hear them.
-Matthew

[stargazer]

Spinning no good. Had a lucid dream... spinning made the surroundings go wonky but then it just woke me up. The second time, I was having a really nice lucid dream and wanted to stay engaged in it, but trying spinning there didn't really accomplish anything. That's a big red X for spinning as an lucid body awareness technique. :D

[Quantitativefool]

Wow, I just had a Lucid dream where I tried walking into a mirror and such, it worked really well to create a different enviorment! Very interesting.

Thanks,
-Stu

[Matthew]

Cool....glad it worked for you, Quantitativefool.
Never tried the spinning, Stargazer. I'll have to try it.
Last night I tried to fly straight up as fast as I could. It didn't lead to an OBE or anything. In fact, I had a hard time going much faster than my usual speed.
-Matthew

[CFTraveler]

Just a thought: Ever since I've lived in my house (12 years now) I've not been able to project myself outside - every time I try to leave the house I end up somewhere else. My bedroom has mirrors in almost all the walls- I wonder if that's why- I might be getting caught in some kind of reflection sling effect or something. Hmmm...

[Matt]

Most of the time when I walk through the door to go outside I get a reality shift that puts me somewhere else. I think that maybe it's a matter of having enough raw lucidity to be able to stay on the same 'frequency' as you go through portals. The mirrors in your house may make it more difficult to stay on the frequency but I'm not sure

[Matthew]

Interesting thoughts on doorways....I've noticed a consciousness shift even in the waking state. When I walk out of a big building or even my house, I've watched my thought patterns and noticed a shift (it feels kind of like a receptive pause). Maybe there is a connection here between astral, dreaming, and real doorways: a natural awareness shift that comes from new surroundings? Err, no... I don't think that is the whole story. Ideas?
-Matthew

[CFTraveler]

Matthew wrote:
Maybe there is a connection here between astral, dreaming, and real doorways: a natural awareness shift that comes from new surroundings?
Maybe. Even though I've lived in my present house for 12 years, I have never been able to go out of the house to the street out of body. I've tried through the roof, through the window, and wall. I think that the last time it hapened (see my OBE journal) I ended up like 4 blocks away. I find this a bit weird, since I used to go through my bedroom window and around the neighborhood in the house I grew up in (and lived all my life until I was like 18 ). Other than mirrors, or the "awareness shift" that happens now, I wonder what else might be going on.

[stargazer]

Hey Matthew... :D

In the thread about RB's spirit communication device, RB mentions in the interview that a good way to astral project from lucid is to, "allow yourself to fall backwards in a lucid dream without trying to catch oneself. This usually causes a shift directly into the astral body."

We'll have to give it a try!

[Apex]

In the thread about RB's spirit communication device, RB mentions in the interview that a good way to astral project from lucid is to, "allow yourself to fall backwards in a lucid dream without trying to catch oneself. This usually causes a shift directly into the astral body."

Wow really? I tried this a couple weeks ago to wake up from a dream, and it worked heh.

[Matthew]

Guys,
I've had non-lucid floating dreams where I was floating on my back and then was in the middle of a projection with major falling sensations, but I've never tried to trigger them by doing this during a lucid dream. I'll give it a try when I have my next round of lucid dreams. Good idea....
-Matthew

[Matthew]

OK... I had my next cycle of lucid dreams and tried the falling back technique.
It caused some major energy vibrations- although not as big for me as going through a mirror. I'm definitely going to keep using this technique (I was secretly very skeptical of it).
Anyway, I had major vibrations and then ended up bobbing against the floor somewhere in my usual cocoon-like phase (feeling all bound up and couldn't see anything...had to wrestle my way out of it). I wiggled myself free and walked-floated around for a bit.

I definitely recommend trying this technique. I basically jumped into the air and then laid back...pretty simple stuff.

-Matthew

[stargazer]

Interesting, Matthew!

Skeptical? But it's a Brucian technique! :lol:

I keed, I keed.

Actually... I had a lucid dream the other night and I've been going through this period where I'm just not feeling very fearful. I tried the stomping thing to notch up lucidity, didn't feel much.. I wasn't very lucid.

Then I fell backwards, and unlike the last time, I committed FULLY to the fall.

All I felt was light vibrations/tingling, and then I think I woke up. What's interesting is the kind of "submerged in tingling" feeling you get... I definitely lost hold of whatever visuals were in the dream, i.e. instead of seeing the ceiling in the dream, I was just pure body awareness (i.e. couldn't see anything) rising up to the surface which in this case was awakeness.

I found it less traumatic than getting stuck in a mirror, so I might keep trying it.

[Matthew]

Stargazer,
Hmmm... yeah, I see from our conversations on this that it really depends on how you feel and your energy state. Sometimes in dreaming we may have a good sense of body awareness...sometimes not. Other times we may notice that there is no sound. I think we might have to tailor the technique to whichever sense is the most active (just a thought...comments?) It also seems to depend on how much energy we have stored. I've tried most of these techniques more than once now. And sometimes, like you, I just get a tingling feeling...not enough energy? Sometimes when I try a day or two later, I succeed.

-Matthew

[Beekeeper]

I've had only one really decent lucid dream. Reading your posts was just so interesting and inspiring.

I could ask a dozen questions now but I think I just need to go and do some more reading. I thought OBEing out of a lucid dream would be a matter of simply requesting but it's clearly not so easy.

I did OBE spontaneously out of a dream last year. I had no recollection of what the dream had been; I just became lucid on a new bypass that was under construction where we had been walking earler that day. It took me so by surprise that I was instantly frightened back into my body. I saw both through my eyes and also from an angle high above myself.

[stargazer]

Matthew I am definitely convinced that just as in waking OBE's, it requires a lot of energy to transition in lucid to AP. I didn't expect the falling technique to work in this dream as by the stomping showed, I was not lucid enough to really have a dynamic energy transition happen. I also suspect it's why I got stuck in the mirror. In the background, I'm continuing to work on NEW so I can build up more energy... I've probably shared this already but in first reading AD, I reasoned that my first OBE challenge would be to try to see what book was on my night table in the next bedroom. When in a lucid dream I found myself standing next to that table, (I put my hands on the table and was able to feel it) I looked at my hands and they started to melt. I started to get this excited, rushed feeling and thought to myself "I'm probably going to start to wake up and OBE" which is exactly what happened.. with a great energy rush, I started to wake up and transition directly into strong projection sensations. Now RB had warned that these sensations were strong but I still had no idea HOW strong they would be!! My heart and navel chakras were rumbling and roaring, and in a rhythmic manner like a dishwasher, it was very loud and distracting, and I tried to relax and stay calm and go with the sensations. At the same time I was getting hypnagogics and heard these little gleeful voices saying "bye! bye! bye!" like they were wishing me off on my OBE, and seeing little blue furry Alice in Wonderland like creatures jumping up and down as they said it. And snap, like that, I woke up right in the middle of this maelstrom. The experience made me want to really work on toning and strengthening my energy body so that those sensations wouldn't be so overwhelming and I'd have a better chance at a completed OBE... I think my best chances are if I'm in a lucid dream after I've already woken up refreshed after a full's night sleep, and it's one of those dreams where I'm so lucid I can touch things, smell things, feel things, etc. I think my problem lately is that I'm concentrating more on jumping right into the OBE technique rather than elongating and strengthening the lucidity... something I will have to work on. You're a more advanced lucid dreamer than I and I'm cheered by your experiences.

I'm intrigued by your idea of focusing on the more active senses. One lucid technique I've seen described was to focus on a detail, until the rest of the visual dream environment slips away. This would perhaps be an excellent technique if your visual acuity were especially high in a lucid dream that day... I tried this technique with little success but I can hardly remember what I was looking at, and I definitely rushed it.

Beekeeper, Dreaming is such a pleasure. I've always been an avid dreamer... I've woken up, fallen back asleep and continued a dream. Or I've had a dream, embellished upon it waking, then fallen back asleep and continued the dream and found the embellishments included.

I just feel lately like, your brain is just a tool waiting to be used, so given the right determination you can really train your brain to experience most anything. People direct a lot of work and energy toward something like learning how to play the piano, but they complain that powers like clairvoyance and aura reading must not exist because they can't be easily accessed. What people would find out if they just worked at it !!! (Though I would have to say, like piano playing, some people have to really work at it and some people are just born good at it, damn them)

It's only in really TRYING to prolong lucidity after reading AP that I've gotten to the extent where I've been able to open a window, feeling it as I do, leaning my head out and breathing in the spring air. Brushing past a tree branch and feeling pain. Looking at an image and willing it to change.

Your experience with the double angles sounds a lot like the part in phasing technique where they say you see yourself from a 3rd person, as well as be aware of it first hand. When you completely merge with yourself into 1st person and there's "one" of you, you're ready to start off on your OBE adventure. I imagine that if you had stayed calm, you would have merged with yourself and been able to take that experience in whatever direction you liked.

[Beekeeper]

Hi Stargazer,

I'm so with you in loving dreams and seeing the brain as a tool. (I'm even learning piano for the first time!)

I didn't know that about the two perspectives. That's happened a couple of times. That's useful knowledge. Thanks a lot.

Sorry about the intrusion. :wink:

[Matthew]

Stargazer & Beekeeper,
I had to take a week off to tend to some business-related things... didn't get to read your posts until today.

I'll have to try focusing on one visually item during my next lucid dream. Of course, I say that as if my normal self can control my lucid self. Sometimes, my lucid self decides to do something I certainly didn't even try to program into it. For example, I hadn't thought about falling back in a lucid dream for weeks. In fact, I was actually trying to do some other things. But when I became lucid, out of nowhere I decided to fall back. Interesting, I think even though I am conscious when lucid, my unconscious "intent" has even more of an impact on my actions. Any thoughts on this?

Anyway, (my mind willing :roll: ) I will focus on the one item next.

Take care (and, Beekeeper, you were not interupting!),

Matthew