CAMELOT FANTASIES

I dream, and I have mastered the rare art of controlling my dreams, the holy grail known as "lucid dreaming". One of my favorite subject is dreams, I have always been fascinated with them. So, I started the path to lucid dreaming a few years back. It takes a long while to master it, but now I have the power to turn a nightmare into a heroic dream of flying and telekinetic abilities.

My favorite way to induce a lucid dream is to call a false awakening and use the differences I have repeatedly introduced into my memory to a real awakening. I now know when an awakening is false and thus, I know that I am dreaming.

Tell me if you wanna know more. I'm gonna continue when I have the time.

I dream, and I have mastered the rare art of controlling my dreams, the holy grail known as "lucid dreaming". One of my favorite subject is dreams, I have always been fascinated with them. So, I started the path to lucid dreaming a few years back. It takes a long while to master it, but now I have the power to turn a nightmare into a heroic dream of flying and telekinetic abilities.

My favorite way to induce a lucid dream is to call a false awakening and use the differences I have repeatedly introduced into my memory to a real awakening. I now know when an awakening is false and thus, I know that I am dreaming.

Tell me if you wanna know more. I'm gonna continue when I have the time.

That's a great post, Slasher. Just the kind I was looking for. Seems like this is going to be a great thread. I haven't mastered controlling my dreams yet. Every time I am on verge of realizing that I might be dreaming, I wake up. So I am unable to manipulate my dreams because I can't continue. Another thing that's holding me back is my fear of the great unknown - as I am trying to go beyond the lucid dream part and perhaps, experience something greater. I do have this spontaneous thing going on but I am just too scared to go through it, so I do everything to wake up. So I think my first step should be just to master my dreams first - like you do if you can guide me how to do it.

Also, in dreams, I am constantly in the future and sometimes perhaps in parallel dimension or other dimension. Those are not all too bad; in fact, some them are really great. I've only had nightmares when I had to take a sleeping pill or allergy pills that make you drowsy. Alcohol does the same so I try to stay away from all these substances. Drugs have been always a very big no no for me.  Interestingly enough, the nightmares always happen the following nights.

I have another interesting thing happening from time to time and I have yet to figure it out. I don't know why it happens or what its meaning. I've read so many things about dreams and this piece I have yet to come across.

Btw, I don't take dreams as just dreams. To me they are so much more than that.

Alcohol or any substance for that matter is a no-go. Try staying away from coffee 12 hours before sleep as well as energy drinks or coca cola/pepsi/mountain dew. Those will always interfere with the crystal image you want to have.

There are 5 steps in my book:

1. Sleep order
2. Creating a symbol
3. Dream remembering
4. Consciousness training
5. Lucid training

The first 3 are basically the most important ingredients ever.

1. Sleep order
One cannot truly master the dreamland with a chaotic sleeping program. If you go to sleep at diverse hours every night, your deep sleep phase will not always coincide with the right time of night in order to produce memorable dreams (these are the dreams you need to have). I bet that you already have an order here, Lady Emma, otherwise you wouldn't be so passionate about dreams. Fact is that once sleep is in order you always get a good night sleep and remember your dreams in more than 75% of cases.

2. Creating a symbol
This is a direction. You must train your mind to focus on symbols you enjoy most in your life. The symbols can be anything from your daily life, from a special cup you drink with to your boss's suit. My symbol is the light bulb to be honest. Whenever a light bulb is on, I look at it carefully and notice all the details it possesses. That's the key here. If you can remember all the details of your favorite object and you encounter it in a dream, it will always lack some elements, which will trigger your mind to realize it is dreaming. The weird part about a light bulb is that in a dream state it won't make your eyes see a bright spot after you look at it. You must train yourself with your symbol, always admire it while being awake. The more you see of it, the more chance there is it will also appear in one of your dreams (no matter if your dream land is a parallel universe).

3. Dream remembering
The key to lucid dreams is memory. If the memory is faulty, you cannot enter a lucid dream without waking up. Remembering your dreams sets your mind at ease and creates pattern essential to remembering the world you've dreamed before. The dream world is usually episodic, so you get to remember stuff in dreams from a previous dream because they happened in the same place (which doesn't exist in the real world). For instance, I once had a 3-part dream about a train ride through Russia. The dreams happened on different nights, and my memory was playing tricks in the real world, but all was so clear while dreaming. This is what you must correct. Remembering the dream in the real world as well will enrich your dream world, because imagination will enrich the image you remember with new stuff all the time, so that, when you are in the same place again, the dream world will have enough detail to keep you lucid. Lucid dreaming is detail, without detail it falls apart, either you go back to deep sleeping, or you wake up.

So, remember the dreams each time you wake up. Repeat them in your head, try re-seeing the images. The brain usually lets go of a dream really fast, so you must concentrate immediately after waking up to keep the memories intact and repeat them enough to remember them later. Do that every time you wake up, either be in the morning or in the middle of the night.

4. Awareness training
Now comes the hard part. We, as a race are usually busy and in a hurry all day long, getting from A to B. With more attention, we can actually remember more details of what we see around us. So, a key to lucid dreaming is to always be aware of your surroundings. Remember places, objects you saw, cars that flew by, people. They will reappear in most of your dreams. But if you train your mind to be aware, it inherits the ability to see more in detail, and any dream will demand more complexity as the brain will get used to being more aware. Now, every once in a while, you must create a "dream test", which should be anything you can think of that happens only in dreams:

a. open a book (the perfect dream test) - if you do this often to check up if you're dreaming in the real world, your brain will get used to doing it in the dream world.
b. turn on/off a light (also perfect) - I can do this with my mind in a dream. If I fail to do it, I know for sure I am not dreaming. But for once, you must try the button. If it fails to work at least once, it is a dream (your mind will know). All dark dreams have problems with lights, you probably know this already, but you must let your brain train for it in the real world, so that the idea is born while you dream.
c. look in the mirror. This is the scariest test you can do because in 90% of cases, there will be someone else in the mirror, or nobody at all, or your face will look different. Do this often in the real world. While in darkness, look in the mirror. When I was 12, I had a nightmare that started just like that. I looked in the mirror and I saw a monster, a sound started right away and all lights went dead, then something grabbed me. The scariest dream I ever had is always in my head, and I know just what to do to stop it if it happens now, because I trained my mind. Be warned, if you're unprepared, this 'c' won't make you realize you're dreaming, it may either cause a nightmare or wake you up.
d. open a closed door. In a dream, what you'll find on the other side will always be different to what you expect for some reason. If you repeat this to the same door, your mind will know the result from the real world, and it will click that you're dreaming.
e. the special thing. You can use your own custom dream test. For instance, I used a dream test featuring my wife not being in bed right near me. In a dream world, nobody was there, which would have been impossible.

Your awareness will not grow over night. You need years to get to a level which will benefit you. But you don't have to be too preoccupied with it. You also need to be relaxed to allow your mind to dig new information all the time.

And now, the piece of resistance:
5. Lucid training
As your awareness grows, it is essential to know what to do once lucid dreams start appearing. Don't do anything crazy at first. You must know one crucial stuff first: sleep paralysis. It can happen that you have a false awakening. What you must do when you wake up in the middle of the night is not open your eyes. Let your mind drift, count to 10, don't concentrate on anything but the dream you had. Many times, you're not really awake, you're still dreaming, this is a false awakening that can put you in a lucid dream instantly. You can now invoke sleep paralysis to realize you're dreaming. If it's night and you're lying in bed during this sleep paralysis, in 90% of cases you won't be able to move. Train your mind to remember this stuff and when it will happen, your mind will become lucid the second you realize you can't move. And that's the miracle of lucid dreaming, you will be able to move right away.

Now comes the training. A lucid dream taxes your mind, it can make you tired in a flash or send you to active mode waking you up. When you get too tired, you fall asleep. If you become too lucid you wake up. You must try to keep concentrated and always do something with your mind, like flying, telekinesis, turning on the lights, jumping, etc. etc, but also know when to stop and let yourself drift. These days I am training for teleportation for instance, which has always awaken me because I concentrated too much and drifted into and active mind state. Your subconscious is active so the dream will also evolve by itself, it is important to not interfere with the dream, as it will fight you and defeat your lucid state (I am not kidding). I really had strange people pop into my mind telling me to stop what I'm doing and go to sleep. It's the most intriguing thing ever.

Ah, but I've composed a book here. I should stop now.

Too bad I forgot to mention no wake-up alarms at either steps, but I think it's clearly understood that any sudden waking up would cause the forgetting of a part of or all of a dream.

Your brother as a symbol could be great if you can overcome your emotions, but unless you do that, you need to focus on a symbol that helps you concentrate, that is able to remind you of things.

The trance state used to happen to me many times, but you must realize that it conflicts with 4. Once in a trance state, your awareness cannot possibly exist. You must try to focus as much as possible during the day (without tiring yourself). Anything you see can become part of the dream world, and anything in real life can have been seen in a dream before, causing a deja vu. It's a chain, and it's important to keep your brain in focus, so that information can run while you dream enough so that it produces variety in your dreams when you become lucid.

In sleep paralysis you are actually half awake, and in some cases, able to really open your eyes. Sometimes there is a sound yes. Trying to wake up will increase the scare, trying to go back to sleep is the key here, because you can leave a thought inside your head which will provoke your mind to remember this event. Obviously, this is not easy, the sleep paralysis scenario is often a gateway to a nightmare as well. I remember moments in which I imagined something coming at me from the edge of the bed. The most famous sleep paralysis cases have lead to unreal images of alien abductions, you know. So careful here.

Try to focus on false awakenings, this is how I first had my lucid dreams. So, have I really woken up? Let me turn on the lights. Ooops, it doesn't work, so, no, I am dreaming. At that instant, all was bright in the room, and everything suddenly had more detail. My mind could not cope with so much detail, and I instantly woken up with a beautiful happiness. What was that? That was incredible. I must do that again sometime. Obviously, doing it for the second time was not that easy, but once it happens once, that is motivation.

Tell me more about your experience, maybe I can help.

Slasher, most times I am aware that I am in the middle of a sleep paralysis and the reason why I try very hard to wake up is because, I feel if I am under attack then I will have no power to fight back since I have no sense of my body. In my last one, I was brave enough because my eyes were open and I could see my room and the fact that I was lying facing the door made me realize even more and so, I waited for a few seconds to go actually out of my body, but apart from this profound buzzing sound, nothing else was happening and eventually, fear took over me once again. I strongly feel though it's a work in progress. I've heard from researchers that lucid dream is only the baby step to full blown out of experiences. And I'd rather have OBE than be in lucid dreams because you are still not in touch with other realities or dimensions in the full sense if you are still lucid. That's my understanding of it. In fact, I've had a few out of body experiences, where I was thrown into this 5th dimension, but that happened a while back. It was spontaneous and I feel the reason why it happened was because I was having a hard time dealing with the reality that I was living at that time. Anyway, next time I have sleep paralysis I'll take your advice and stick with it and see what happens.

Because my dreams are quite intense I almost always experience sudden wake up and that's why I forget a lot of my dreams, but there are dreams that are incredibly hard to forget.  They are just too detail and vivid. So the dream tests will be hard to do if I am already in the middle of a very intense dream which will not take give me time to think or run a test, but I'll give it a shot. I've noticed that when my brother is involved in any dream is only when I start to question my reality, no matter how intense the dream is, it makes me pause and question my 'state of being'. It's always one thing leading to another. So my brother is the key but he's also a very big obstacle since I am incredibly attached to him emotionally. I feel things are trying to happen to me naturally but because I have this overwhelming fear and the fact that, I am so emotionally attached to my brother is what taking me such a long time.

I think you are right about the trance state. It does contradict with No. 4. However, one time I was crossing this building and I noticed for the first time that there were some very strong pillars in front of it. It was probably part of the building design I suppose. What bothered me was the fact that I couldn't tell for the life me if they were always there.  I thought they were never there and I thought it was the first time I was seeing these pillars in the real world, but they couldn't have made it overnight. That's virtually impossible. And I walk that street every day, so how could I not notice those before? It then begged the question, was I dreaming the same street without the pillars then? Possibly. Or did I just simply not notice these before? So there are things like that happen to me sometimes. On one hand, I am extremely detail oriented; on another, I don't notice it if there's an elephant in the room. Or perhaps my dream state might just be overlapping my real world at times. In any case, it's very interesting to say the least.

Dreams, OBEs, NDEs, paranormal etc. are all independent of the brain; in fact, has nothing to do with the brain. Brain is your biological machine that the mind uses to reach out to the physical universe and need the physical aspect to function as well. Mind itself exits independent of the physical world and exists out of spacetime. Quantum mechanics will tell you that. Mainstream science is misleading. Current model cannot explain many things and won't be able to main things ever. because traditional science relies on data, measurement etc. The unseen universe works on a very different level. Mainstream science is only good for every day thing.

I am not sure how you mean. By 'unseen universe' I don't mean something still out there and not seen. I mean going inward. We live in a multidimensional Universe and we are multidimensional beings. Things materialize and de-materialize all the time. We are just not that advanced to be aware of it. Since the material Universe is a highly complex matter, it needs a very complex brain, a tool as in, to explore it but a brain is nothing more than that. A complex vehicle that mind uses in the physical world. This physical body is not needed in other realities. since they are not 'out there'.  There's nothing 'out there' that's not 'in here' first.

Things actually don't materialize unless an Observer looks at it. They all exist as wave functions of endless possibilities and it's the Observer who chooses to collapse some of these possibilities to actuality in order to experience what it desires. What we see is the emerging level - the final result. Everything is decided at that fundamental level and that's why people don't even realize that they have already decided or reacted on things even before they know it. Human brain is too slow for that kind of information. This Observer is your non-local entity, as in, it doesn't use anything to connect. It is not an energy but beyond that. It uses energies to create matter but it's own existence is non-local and fundamental. There are many realities out there created by thoughts or say, by the Observer; physical reality is only one of them. To experience all others, one needs to go inward.

Anyway, I am actually not all that interested in lucid dreams; they are still sort of out of body experience but only, you are not as conscious as you are in 'real life'. In OBEs, you are fully conscious; that's why these experiences are very different than lucid dreams. They change people's life and change them forever. Lucid dreams have no real impact on people as they still feel they are only 'dreaming'. I have first hand experience of having OBEs though that happened a few years ago, but it has changed my life for one.

Truth be told, science has no clue as to why we sleep or dream or what happens to our consciousness when we sleep.

You can't define or measure a subjective reality with an objective model. If science does intend to do that then that would be an intellectually dense attempt. In other words, in order to test the subjective world, you need a subjective model.