Another excerpt

Here's another excerpt from a few days after the previous one. Let's have a look at this.

"29/03/07
About 6pm: Focused on putting body to sleep using stretches and relaxing, managed, but mind kept on wandering into half-awake, half-asleep semi-dreams, which I suppose is a good thing. Was disturbed by a knock at the front door. Feel I've made progress."

I was attempting the method of lying in your bed completely still and not moving an inch until your body begins to fall asleep while your mind stays active and awake. It's a lot harder than it sounds though as evidenced by this excerpt, as it's very hard to keep your mind from wandering into dreams and falling asleep with your body. As you can see, I was disturbed by a knock at the front door, which too is a problem. And I don't mind just being disturbed, obviously that is a sort of problem, but actually being aware that something COULD potentially disturb you is often enough to ruin the whole session as it's hard to fully commit knowing you could potentially be interrupted. However, as I noted at the end, this is still progress, and every bit of practice is worthwhile, none of it is wasted. Every "failure" (if you can call it that) builds up another block towards your eventual success.

Excerpts from my astral journals

From 2007 to today I have kept a journal of astral experiences, aswell as a journal of all of my dreams including lucid dreams. For the next few posts I'm going to show you some excerpts from this that felt important to me that may be useful to you. Just to give an idea here is the first entry I ever made.

"25/03/2007, 17:38
I very nearly just astral projected. I lay in my bed naked and told myself that I would do it, and asked my spirit guide for help. I lay on my back completely still. I started to feel lots of vibrations, first in my head and then my entire body, vibrating as one unit. After two minutes of stillness I get a strong urge to move, which makes my body tingle. After a short while (about five minutes) I went into a more dreamy state and could will myself to feel like I was flying around. Every now and then I feel like I'm leaving my body, but came back every time. Was eventually disturbed by the phone. Am now very tired. Feel...odd."

Sorry for the abscense

Been going through a lot of changes lately that have not only compromised my time writing for this blog but also my time practicing astral travel and lucid dreaming, when you don't have a good control over your sleeping hours it's nearly impossible to keep up consistent practice. However, I'm back at it now and might even be taking on some collaborators to share their own experiences. I used to post under the name AstralReality, I'm now using CountBlogs to manage all of my blogs, so don't be confused, AstralReality/CountBlogs are the same person.

Thanks for your patience.

Am I Dreaming: Numbers Method

Just a quick post here travellers. Every now and then I'll post a different method of testing whether or not you're dreaming, a lot of the type you can get a hint that you are dreaming but brush it off quickly due to your dream logic not being consistant with logic of waking reality.

This is the simplest method, and one I've had best results with - look for a set of numbers. On a piece of paper, on a credit card, on a bank statement, serial code, license plate, whatever. Look at it really fast, then look away. The look back again. If you're in a dream, chances are the digits will be different. That's because of your dream logic, and the fact that only the right (creative) side of your brain is active. The left side (which deals with numbers, stats, figures, details, facts, measurements etc.) is fast asleep. Only the right side of your brain is active during dreams...that's why you can dream something bizarre and not question the reality of it. In waking reality, numbers and codes are important, they represent measurements, time etc. but in dream logic, they're useless. They're merely representing a measurement but the figures themselves are meaningless, the right side of your brain simply can't make sense of them.

So, quickly look at that license plate. See that M024RTY turns to M3662ZKL in an instant as you look away and look again. A clear sign that your waking logic is not existant, and that you're in your dream world. Get exploring!

False Awakenings

So I was speaking to a friend about this last night and since it seems to be something that a lot of lucid dreamers go through, I figure I should make a post about it.

False awakenings are the phenomenom of feeling like you've woke up then realised you're dreaming. You might wake up in your own room, with your regular surroundings, only to wake up again a few minutes later. For many people, myself included, this then repeats itself for quite a while. In the past I've had upto 10 false awakenings in a row. If you start experiencing these (especially if you've been practicing dream recall), it's a good sign that you've come far. Your mind is very alert while you sleep to the point where it's struggling to tell the difference between dream and reality. However, this should only last about ten minutes at most and isn't something to fear, it just means you're in deep sleep and as soon as someone budges you or makes a noise you'll wake up like normal.

What not to do: Don't try shouting people. Everyone does it, and I fall in every time. I shout "wake me up, I'm dreaming and can't wake up" - it feels so real that I genuinely believe I've been shouting them. Obviously I'm still under sleep paralysis and am not shouting anything, but the dream replication is so damn real. Another not to do: Don't panic. Sure, it can be a bit frustrating, but rather than trying to fight it and force yourself to wake up (which, in the past for me, has been proven futile) just have some fun. Conjure stuff up, explore, do dream stuff. You're basically locked in a lucid dream that, unlike the usual, is actually not going to fade out within minutes of you realising it. Of course, make sure you're definitely dreaming first, you don't wanna try flying whilst in waking reality (this is very unlikely though).

It is admittedly frustrating and a little frightening at first but unfortunately an unavoiable side-effect of lucid dreaming, but it's a sign that you've come far. See it as like when you've got a muscle aching after the gym. Sure it's not a nice feeling and you could do without it, but it's a good thing because it shows that you've made progress.

So if you can, try to take advantage of the false awakenings you'll no doubt eventually experience. Have fun, sleep well and happy flying.

Sorry for the abscence

Sorry for the delay folks, I've had a lot of stuff going on lately and not had time to post much. I've been going through a break-up and this has affected my dreams a lot, and I don't like to write those dreams down, but has anyone else been trying this? Find any interesting results? Let me know.

Dream recall - any results?

So it's been a while and I apologise for my long absence, I've been very busy. So did anyone try the dream recall technique and find any interesting results?

Since I've had few comments I'm gonna get the ball rolling by posting my own results of the upcoming week or two. Would be interesting if someone else tried it also, the amount of dreams you'll recall is really fascinating. So in about a week from now I'm going to post my results and hopefully somebody else has something to compare to.

Don't underestimate how important dream recall is. It's a vital step in achieving lucidity/astral projection, just skipping to the exciting stuff isn't the right way to do it. Besides, dream recall IS exciting as you see results really quickly. So I'll post my own...maybe daily, maybe at the end of the week depending upon how busy I am. So keep up with me and try it yourself, I'm sure you'll wield some fascinating results.