Ever wondered if you were dreaming? I can't take credit for the following, I read it on a dreaming website, perhaps, Dreammoods.com or The Lucidity Institute.
Means of knowing whether or not you are dreaming need to be safe, discrete and 100% accurate. Pinching, doing something dangerous or illegal don't fit these criteria. If more people knew this simple technique, there would be more lucid dreamers.
The dreaming consciousness and the physical body are inexorably connected in one fashion alone: The respiratory system. No matter what is going on in your dream, if your sleeping physical body can breathe, your dreaming body can breathe. If you fall in water and 'drown' you will find you can somehow still breathe.
This fact coupled with one other, makes a safe, discrete and 100% accurate dream check. The other fact is that your physical body is paralysed to prevent acting out your dreams.
The dream check is to simply pinch your nose like you're about to dive into water and close your mouth. Now try to breathe through your nose. Try it right now. You can't because it is impossibe.
If you can, you may procede with absolute certainty that you are dreaming. Have fun.
Monday, January 7, 2013
Epic Dream
Friends,
It was perhaps a week ago, I posted my interest in Oneirology on Facebook. For the uninitiated, Oneirology (Oh-nigh-rol-ogy) is the study of dreams. A practitioner thereof is often refered to as an Oneirinaught. We'll just say lucid dreaming and lucid dreamer. Lucidity simply refers to the knowlegde that you are dreaming. What you decide to try to do with that knowledge delves into what is known as dream control.
Last week, I complained of "the worst lucid dream ever". I was in my living room, surrounded by extended family, including my mother. I remember doing a dream check and becoming lucid. I remember saying aloud "I dream! I'm dreaming!" but they didn't believe me. I tried every trick I know to try and convince them, but nothing worked. I had no extraordinary power at all. I couldn't fly, walk the walls, lift heavy objects, nothing. Finally, I was able to eacape the room by walking through the door to the kitchen. It was difficult, but I passed through and found myself in the kitchen of a house I lived in over five years ago.
Last night, I had the opposite, perhaps the best lucid dream ever. It still lacked all but the slightest modicum of control, but the best dreams, for me, are what I call semi-lucid. I was only aware that I was dreaming. I made no effort to control my environment or do anything extraordinary. I simply lived out the dream as a man wandering in wide eyed wonder of what his mind is capable. Once I start doing crazy things like flying, the dream tends to fade away. What stuck out the most in the dream was permanence. Things stayed where I left them. If I left a room and went back later, I would invariably find the same room. Now I have no way of proving this, even to myself, until it becomes possible to record and playback your dreams. I know how pliable the conscious mind is when the body is asleep, capable of believing anything it sees or any notion that may occur to it. Therefore, I may be mistaken in this permanence, but it certainly did appear so at the time.
The plot of the dream, such as it was, is lost on me now, but it took place mostly on an infinitely large train. It was a bullet train, travelling over 300 miles per hour. I remember I could feel the incredible wind when I would travel between cars.
What stuck out second, was the false awakening after the train docked in The City. The City is one of my reoccurring settings. Like the train, it is infinitely large. It is full of towering buildings, each of them a universe unto itself once inside. Believing myself awake again, I wandered the corridors of one of these buildings until I randomly did a dream check. "No..." I said. I tried again "No it can't be."
I was actually incredulous. The environment, so intricately rendered could not possibly be a dream. But it was.
It was perhaps a week ago, I posted my interest in Oneirology on Facebook. For the uninitiated, Oneirology (Oh-nigh-rol-ogy) is the study of dreams. A practitioner thereof is often refered to as an Oneirinaught. We'll just say lucid dreaming and lucid dreamer. Lucidity simply refers to the knowlegde that you are dreaming. What you decide to try to do with that knowledge delves into what is known as dream control.
Last week, I complained of "the worst lucid dream ever". I was in my living room, surrounded by extended family, including my mother. I remember doing a dream check and becoming lucid. I remember saying aloud "I dream! I'm dreaming!" but they didn't believe me. I tried every trick I know to try and convince them, but nothing worked. I had no extraordinary power at all. I couldn't fly, walk the walls, lift heavy objects, nothing. Finally, I was able to eacape the room by walking through the door to the kitchen. It was difficult, but I passed through and found myself in the kitchen of a house I lived in over five years ago.
Last night, I had the opposite, perhaps the best lucid dream ever. It still lacked all but the slightest modicum of control, but the best dreams, for me, are what I call semi-lucid. I was only aware that I was dreaming. I made no effort to control my environment or do anything extraordinary. I simply lived out the dream as a man wandering in wide eyed wonder of what his mind is capable. Once I start doing crazy things like flying, the dream tends to fade away. What stuck out the most in the dream was permanence. Things stayed where I left them. If I left a room and went back later, I would invariably find the same room. Now I have no way of proving this, even to myself, until it becomes possible to record and playback your dreams. I know how pliable the conscious mind is when the body is asleep, capable of believing anything it sees or any notion that may occur to it. Therefore, I may be mistaken in this permanence, but it certainly did appear so at the time.
The plot of the dream, such as it was, is lost on me now, but it took place mostly on an infinitely large train. It was a bullet train, travelling over 300 miles per hour. I remember I could feel the incredible wind when I would travel between cars.
What stuck out second, was the false awakening after the train docked in The City. The City is one of my reoccurring settings. Like the train, it is infinitely large. It is full of towering buildings, each of them a universe unto itself once inside. Believing myself awake again, I wandered the corridors of one of these buildings until I randomly did a dream check. "No..." I said. I tried again "No it can't be."
I was actually incredulous. The environment, so intricately rendered could not possibly be a dream. But it was.
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