Lumi's Dreaming Thread; Dreams of Moon

[Lucilyn]

It's not here yet ?_?

It said 3-13 business days, and today (it's 4AM) will be the 14th day. It's coming from Poland to the US so I guess it could take a while, but it really should be here soon..

[Ido]

I was wondering too, but not anymore

>investing in Eastern Poland

inb4 Lumi got scammed

Edited August 4, 2020 by Ido
updated broken link

[Luminesce]

Wow, that's quite an image. It got here today but I won't be going to sleep for at least 7-8 more hours, so I was waiting to post until then, but I don't wanna keep you guys waiting.

 

Came with its own batteries, the large circle kind, but I haven't tested if it works yet or anything. Seems good though, came with an instruction manual. While I don't get my hopes up for things like this anymore, Lucilyn told me to make sure I was hype about it. So I'll at least say - could not work physically, could not work for me personally, or this could be the last day before actually having met my tulpas in a lucid dream.

 

I will say, it's fairly likely it'll be the latter. No guarantees, but as far as I can tell this should work just fine. I wouldn't have put $170 into it if I thought the chance was small.

[Luminesce]

Alright, read the rather extensive mini-manual twice and messed with it a little. Protip, don't test the flash brightness with your eyes open. Despite having my eyes closed the second time, it still seems rather bright, but I can't quite say if it's bright enough to wake me up or just bright enough to catch my attention in a dream. Sound is off by default as it should be. Turned on Two-Way-Communication, set it to low intensity since the default 6 out of 9 was too bright for me. Should get brighter as it goes on once it detects I'm in REM sleep, going off again every 30 seconds like six times or so. Unfortunately we've been practicing moving our eyes left and right to turn it off... You have to move them up and down. But just liken it to nodding "Yes, I'm awake" I suppose.

 

Going to sleep for a few hours and then test it once when I first wake up, post-three hours. That's too early for good quality/length lucid dreams, but I need to test the intensity and if it even works. Well, I guess that would mean testing the sensitivity. Anyways, willing to wake myself up unnecessarily a few times so I can hopefully lucid dream the first night post-six hours. Doesn't block light quite as well as my actual sleeping mask so hopefully my tinfoiled window and crappy blinds will keep it dark enough. I used to sleep in 'til 3-4 PM with it being bright in my room anyways, but with lucid dreaming stuff going on it could be harder to go back to sleep. Plus the flashing lights aren't as noticeable with light around me. But, it should be fine, especially since TWC raises intensity over time rather than using a single setting.

 

The manual noted making changing/strange light levels a dream sign, which was actually helpful. Changing light levels, flashing lights, bright lights and all those sorts of things, training yourself to reality check whenever you see them will help the flashes not blend into your dreams too much. I believe I've got police lights and false-awakening-window lights down, which are probably the most common appearances of light in my dreams, but I guess I might get tricked by something else. We'll see. And again, the device I'm using here is the REM-Dreamer, non-pro. Mainly because it has Two-Way-Communication and I can stop it from annoyingly flashing lights in my lucid dreams once I'm actually lucid.

 

[video=youtube]

("Agepoyo" means "Excitement")

So here we go. Either the thing wakes me up every time after I fail to notice it at first, I fail to notice it at all (but I will raise the sensitivity to medium if it happens more than 2-3 times), or it manages to not work by perhaps not detecting my eye movement during REM. But the default settings should all be fine for me. I'm a light sleeper, so hopefully the main variable will be my ability to stabilize the dream instead of waking up. We've practiced that, but it doesn't always work out. But then, we've only had literally a couple of chances.

 

So either one of those things, or my post tomorrow will be about finally accomplishing my biggest goal in life of meeting my tulpas. My hopes are at a permanent height level of "eh", so feel free to get your guys' up in my place. Of course, if everything goes as planned... I might be more enthusiastic about this than I've been about anything in years.

 

 

Alright, listening to that song even has me a little excited. Such a "Reisen"-feeling song from like 2012, too happy not to make you happy.

 

[Luminesce]

Slept about three hours with the mask on but turned off, turned it on, didn't fall asleep for somewhere between 80 to 120 minutes. I'm pretty sure I fell asleep at that point anyway, but it might just have been NREM-levels of sleep because the only type of "dream" I remember having is the floaty thought kind. Eventually had one dream that I sort of forgot until waking up.

 

The REM-Dreamer's lights are very bright, lol. They didn't even wake me up - just gave me a stressful dream of my phone flashing really bright lights in my eyes, was practically painful. That being said, I think the main time I remember was the last time it went off, which means it was the most intense and the times before it were possibly a lot less so. Like possibly not painful. I've decided to go with the mindset/dream sign logic that "Bright flashing lights are punishing me for not realizing I'm dreaming", so I'm trying to think that every so often now. Also reality checking whenever light levels change. Unfortunately there's not much flashing light in my life, so maybe I'll have to actually put the thing on every once in a while to get the actual effect. Oh yeah, tried to sleep for another hour or so after that and couldn't. So I got at most 4 hours of real sleep.

 

 

Gameplan: I'm not typically tired the next day after sleeping 2-6 hours, but I do end up being a lot more tired than normal the next time night comes around. So hopefully, whenever the heck it is that my body decides to sleep, I'll have an easier time going to sleep and not staying awake through the night. Well, morning really. I think I mostly got the hang of the device itself, all its functions and what it does. It does flash the light a couple times before its delay timer you set runs out (you can add ten minutes by pressing a button... right above your nose, really), which is just distracting enough - even potentially - that it makes it a bit harder to sleep. I think I'm going to turn the brightness down to like 2 for that one, while the actual brightness isn't adjustable manually - it's set by the TWC preset, and mine was on low lol. Hopefully those settings will be perfect. If I really feel like it or if it really bothers me, I might turn the flashing rate down, because it really is a bit stressful. Yeah... definitely going to increase the delay between flashes a bit. I think 1 second is like the max though..?

 

Outlook: Could go perfectly tonight, could take 2-3 nights before the routine really becomes solid, could take a week or two before I stop failing to notice the flashing - hopefully that won't be a problem from tonight forward though. But one thing's for sure, unless the device itself snaps in half, this is going to result in me having lucid dreams. Like there's no way it won't. Even misused lucid dreaming devices have a pretty high single-random-success rate just for screwing with your sleeping and expectations in the right way. But, I know what I'm doing, so even better.

 

I still can't take large events too seriously - just in my nature, from birthday parties and christmas to a dying pet or cousin, my mind's desensitized itself to all but the most direct and close-to-home emotional cues. Which is still totally fine with me. I still love Christmas, but honestly instead of being happy and excited when opening a present, I'm just in a good mood the whole month. I still enjoy the occasions one would normally be excited for. And I sure as heck am going to enjoy seeing my tulpas. Once that's actually been realized to my brain, it might actually let me be excited in the future. Couldn't say.

 

But I can absolutely say it'll be as great as I hope, if not better. While practicing the "realizing you're dreaming" routine, from a random scenario I was in in an actual dream the night before to creating a door to the wonderland to seeing my tulpas on the two couches in our living room, I got to the hugging part where I hug Flandre - but after, Lucilyn went to hug me and I lifted her up and spun around a bit (because a normal hug just isn't fun enough) and it actually made me smile IRL. So just the idea of meeting them does still hold some emotional weight for me. And that's impressive, because I haven't been legitimately excited about anything happening in the future in years.

[Luminesce]

Man, I'm tired, but in the wrong way. I'm not tired in the sense that I'll be able to fall asleep easily, I don't think. But I am tired in the way that makes you want to just go to sleep and not do any lucid dreaming stuff. Hopefully that doesn't lead to me not waking up 3-4 hours in...

 

You know, while I was super willing to take advantage of the fact that I can wake up in the middle of the night to put the mask on instead of using a delay, I think I was thinking about it wrong. I'm normally averse to delay timers in lucid dreaming induction because I take a varying amount of time to fall asleep, especially if I'm on a timer. But the REM-Dreamer just has a delay before it can work. Since I can sleep with the mask on, I guess I could just set the delay to 4 hours and not think about it... Since messing with the delay timer is probably what kept me from falling back asleep yesterday, I think that may be my best option.

 

Also the heater has decided to turn on when my room is already warm, and now I'm hot. Now that could be bad news.. But maybe I'll be tired enough to get to the part where the light hurts my eyes anyway, we'll see. I will definitely see. I've at least somewhat trained myself to respond to bright/flashing lights by reality checking, but it might take a while to set in, or it might not.

 

Every single night from here on out could be the last before we meet our goal. Being able to say that confidently is pretty encouraging.

[Luminesce]

That was about 11 hours in bed, maybe (maybe) 8 1/2 hours of sleep. Having to think even a little about setting the delay forward 10-20 minutes makes it hard to fall back asleep. Not because the thinking is intensive, but because I have to be outside of the foggy able-to-fall-back-asleep state to do so.

 

Which wouldn't have been a problem, except the thing went off like five times while I was awake. Turns out the sensor is sensitive to blinking as eye movement, and I swear it even went off when my eyes were totally still a few times too. So I turned the sensitivity down and I don't think it really happened again, but it was only like two more cycles anyway.

 

{Honestly, after writing this whole post I don't even agree with what I thought here anymore. Somehow my understanding changed drastically within the last two paragraphs, lol. But that's the biggest reason we write here - helps us organize our thoughts and figure things out. Spoilers, my real plan is to set the sensitivity very high to guarantee it goes off during REM, and set the delay to 20 minutes every time I wake up immediately, ignoring the fact that it will most certainly go off every time I open my eyes.}

[hidden]I didn't notice it in my dreams at all though. I think I need to work on dream recall a bit just to recognize when it even happened. I had one dream that technically contained small explosions (like, crappy street fireworks), but they didn't seem very bright, and absolutely nowhere near the level of almost hurting my eyes like the first time. So either it didn't occur then or my brain is already filtering it out, which I extremely doubt, because man does it get bright. I think it just didn't go off while I was sleeping. Which means either I fell asleep and had dreams in less than ~15 minutes before the delay was up, it went off without me noticing (I don't feel like this is the case), or the sensor couldn't tell I was dreaming. I did the sensor sensitivity test to see just what it considered eye movement, and it seemed when I laid on my left side (which would push the sensor that's only on one side away from my right eye I guess) it didn't detect anything but blinking well, then on my right it detected actually moving my eyes (not sure if my eyes move that much in REM sleep), then on my left again it just seemed to work where it didn't before, possibly because I nudged it back over a few centimeters..

 

Soooo, interesting. Think the final count for how many times it went off was 13. At least five or six of those are accounted for while I was awake, possibly more like eight. Tiny chance that one or more of the times I saw the first flashes indicating the delay time was up and I extended it were it actually going off, but I don't think so. Definitely still hard to get back to sleep in a timely manner, more often than not (literally more than 75% of the time) I had to extend the timer another 10 minutes because I was still awake when it ran out. I was always afraid to do 20 minutes though just in case I fell asleep and it missed the dream. Which it sort of feels like happened the one or two times I did it. But none of that lines up with how long I know my sleep cycles are..

 

To be honest, I think I'm actually not sleeping very deeply and waking up more quickly/often because of my habit of doing that unintentionally whenever I'm anticipating anything happening later, like an alarm clock, or Christmas when I was younger. That's the best explanation I have for why the REM cycles seem so short. The other half is that the sensors might not be picking up when I'm asleep, or it just somehow doesn't get bright enough all of a sudden. Maybe both. Tiny tiny chance the longer delay/total flashing period somehow makes it way less intense than before, but... Really, it practically hurt my eyes in the one dream yesterday, there's no way it's suddenly unnoticeable. I'm not willing to believe my mind is already filtering it out. I'm way too sensitive to light and sounds when I'm asleep. At worst it would just be tricking me more often into believing something in my dream was flashing. But again, I'm not remembering any cases of that...

 

I gueeeeesssss I can set the sensitivity really high and continue making use of the 3-4 hour delay. But as soon as I'm awake and even slightly open my eyes it's going to start going off. Which to be fair, with the TWC set to low, is only very dim non-stressful light flashes. But everything matters when I'm having trouble falling back asleep in the first place. And don't get me wrong, the biggest problem here is my inability to fall asleep in a timely manner throughout the night. That's just not something I'm sure I can fix. So following that, the biggest problem is that it might have trouble detecting REM on the same setting that keeps it from always going off when I'm awake.[/hidden]

 

 

So the most realistic plan I have is to keep the sensitivity on relatively high and make frequent use of the delay timer. Get used to ignoring the flashes going off after I wake up, also get used to setting the delay to, say, 20? minutes as soon as I know I'm awake. If I can make that routine it should stop being as hard to get back to sleep. I do wish I could be more specific than 10 minute intervals, because I'm really afraid of cutting off parts of the dreams, but to be fair I'm still pretty confused on just when exactly I'm in REM sleep. I "could've sworn" I went back to a dream state within ten minutes of no longer being conscious after 4+ hours into sleeping. But I could also swear that I nearly always wake up very soon after a dream. So either I'm wrong on the first account, or the REM period really is that whole time like I'd like to think it is. As far as I know, relatively awake leads to dreamlike thoughts leads to dreamlike imagery leads to full dreams, and then depending on the person (and just.. sort of random even for the person) there's an amount of time between the dream and waking up, like a quicker version of the first falling asleep part.

 

So yeah. High sensitivity, frequent use of the delay timer to 20 minutes instead of 10 upon waking, and I'm debating whether counting the times I see the timer go off is a good idea. I can differentiate the flashes of the delay running out or the REM detection going off, but that requires being a little more conscious, which is iffy. My aim is to lower the chance of me ever seeing the delay timer run out by increasing it to 20 minutes. But I really can't do 30, right? That seems too long.. If nothing changes by tomorrow, I'll try 30 minute delays just to fully erase the chance of the timer running out, but I really am going for full-length dreams. We'll see.

[tulpa001]

I think it's a rumour that all dreams occur during REM sleep. I heard, the deeper the stage of sleep you are in, the more realistic your dreams get. I personally believe you have to be in one of these deep stages to get multiple false awakening dreams. We used to think that REM was a light stage of sleep, but the last couple hours of your sleep cycle is a solid light stage of sleep during which it is normal to have a giant two hour dream. I think REM only happens for brief five minute bursts? Possibly they can happen in multiple sleep stages.

 

Personally, I can report that our dream recall is way up. This night, I think we managed to recall all of them. Though, that's not great. They were nightmares, not lucid dreams. Though, we felt like we were awake in a couple of them. Which is unusual. Usually we know we are asleep.

 

First: Our sadistic mind made us imagine we were woken up by our mother telling us our uncle died, and it made us believe it. That was different.

 

Our last dream was really impressive, and tasty with a puffed wheat squares theme. We were both clearly there in human form. But weirdly, there were two realities, and you could get to them by crawling under the bed. The other being the "tulpa" world I came from, that looks exactly like this one. But apparently this makes perfect sense, and we thought this was real and we were awake.

[Luminesce]

@Tulpa I'm not really sure where to even start with that REM stuff you said. Deep sleep stages stop even happening when you get far enough into your REM cycles. You do not dream in deep sleep either. NREM "dreams" (which I maintain, at least for me and the average person, are much less vivid and satisfying) occur in lighter stages of sleep too. Unless by deep sleep you meant later into the REM/sleep cycles anyway. And REM sleep is certainly longer than five minute bursts. Maybe the eye movement isn't consistent the entire time, if you heard something like that somewhere, but the REM stage itself gets quite a bit longer through the night. Also, I saw that, this is our thread not yours :V

 

---

 

I really wanted the first post of the 50th page to be my first lucid dream where the thread would change into a lucid dreaming thread, but it hasn't happened yet.

 

So I WAS going to post something about how stressful failing lucid dreaming attempts is, because you don't get a break every night of just sleeping and not worrying about anything. I mean, it is stressful. I had a song (outro to one of my favorite two animes) playing in my head all of last night, and I was going to post it here today because it seemed like it might be fitting. But I watched it first, and it was so dang cute and inspiring it put me in a good mood. I honestly forgot the words it's been so long... But I like those words.

 

I mean, what can I say after that? Nothing I wanted to say can be said now. Also, leave it to a moon rabbit to force me out of a bad mood. (Yes, Kurousagi is actually a moon rabbit)

 

 

So, basically more of the same of stuff just not working. Last-last night was a mess where I just never saw the cues, and I think only 3 or 4 were generated after my first 4 hours of sleep anyways. Last night it was just nothing at all. Supposedly there were 2 cues, which is partly because I waited 5ish hours to turn it on and then only fell asleep two-ish more times. But the other part, I think, is that the sensor just doesn't even line up with my eye. It's almost as if... it's below the light that actually flashes, which is parallel to the other light that actually flashes, which both sit directly in front of my eyes. I had the sensitivity set to 7/9 which is really high. Did the REM eye movement test and it detected literally nothing on 7, or on 9, except blinking. Pushed the mask up a little bit and then it did. So like, either I'm wearing the mask slightly too low or the hardware itself rests slightly too far down in the mask. Honestly, if I raise it at all the left light doesn't even appear through the hole. So I guess I just have to try and wear the mask higher. Annoying, but I can do it. It sure doesn't block much light for a sleeping mask, certainly not if I have to be able to partly see under it while looking straight ahead, but whatever.

 

So I have no idea where to set the sensitivity now. I guess I'll put it back on 6. So now all that's left is that video up there ^ because, really, aside from reporting on the REM-Dreamer itself that video has left me nothing else to say. It was kind of unintentionally 101% perfect.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Luminesce

[Luminesce]

I'm not posting every day because the primary reasoning behind that was to make sure we never stopped working towards our goal, and now that I have the REM-Dreamer it's such a given not a single night goes by without trying to lucid dream. Which, has really shortened how much sleep I get overall, so immediately after fixing my schedule a couple of days ago (fix is a relative term, but it usually means going to sleep from 5 to 11pm instead of 5 to 11am) I was awake for only 4 hours before going back to sleep at 11am lol. Not a nap either, I can't really nap, I slept for a solid 7 hours. Then stayed up the entire night and day because I refused to have a fixed schedule for less than a whole day. So I woke up around 4 AM and that's pretty much preferable for us we've decided. Waking up in the "early morning" ie still-nighttime is best.

 

So anyways. For various but possibly only two primary reasons I'm having trouble tracking down, stuff hasn't been working. A few days ago I woke up with only 3 cues in the night, a couple days ago only 1, and last night also only 1. I'm pretty sure a minimum of 6 and maximum of like 16 is intended. I originally thought it was because the sensor couldn't actually see my eye well, which might still be the case and is just one of several confounding factors I'm working out.

 

After last night, I'd say the other two are incorrect delay times, and something with the cues. I'm not sure if it's the sensitivity (still sitting around 7/9), the (lack of) brightness (still sitting on low, did medium last last night and only got one cue so I figured that wasn't the problem), the sensor's varying position depending on my position, or perhaps some weirder thing like the flash length/frequency.

 

I will say that a form of progress was made last night, less that things are progressing and more that we're not at a standstill. The REM-Dreamer actually woke me up during a dream. Based on the feeling at the time - and the fact that I woke up - I'd say the dream was most of the way over, with maybe a few minutes left, I'm not sure. So at the very least we've now had a single cue for sure go off while I was in the middle of a real dream. Related to that - last night I noted the time as 4:29AM, set the delay to 18-22 minutes or so, went to sleep, had a dream... And the time was 4:50AM. These were not dreamy thoughts or dreamlike imagery, I had a real dream. I can't say it was necessarily vivid or long, but it was more than a single scenario dream and it was vivid enough to have a sense of presence and 3D space that lesser dream states usually lack, for me. I woke up, was confused at how it had only been about 20 minutes yet I actually dreamed, and to seal the deal my REM-Dreamer delay was still on for another 30 seconds. Dang, man. I'm simultaneously happy to finally get some hands-on learning experience with REM cycles and dreaming, and just confused.

 

I can only assume it was a slightly unnatural awakening, ie the dream was shortened because of my """intent""" to wake up soon. That, or.. I'm starting to get suspicious my own REM cycles don't match up with the norm. Most likely it's my natural waking up between cycles and minor acts of consciousness stretching/delaying/shortening? them a bit. Much less likely I might just sleep differently than normal. But I've never really heard of anything like that.

 

But yeah, that leaves me pretty confused about what exactly to do with the delay timer. I have to set it to the minimum of 10 minutes or it'll go off with my blinking/rolling over and such. With the sensitivity on 7+, assuming the sensor is lined up (if that's a problem), it can even detect just slight single eye-movements as REM too. But I mean... I've been setting it to 20 minutes because I figured that was time to fall asleep and transition to REM sleep and at least start a dream. How in the world I managed to fall asleep, dream and wake up in 20 minutes is beyond me. Maybe the fairly unnatural sleeping schedule plus how long I'd been asleep translated to very late stages of REM? But then, I shouldn't have woken up so quickly. The simple answer is things were screwed up and my best guess is I effectively "napped" with my """intent to wake up"""/minor consciousness, rather than normally going back to sleep. I mean, the whole situation was too messed up to make sense out of honestly.

 

Butyeahbut yeah, that does leave me pretty confused about what to do with the delay timer. Earlier on if I set the time for 10 minutes I couldn't even fall asleep in time and that chained to like 30 minutes of awakeness at least. My only idea is to set it to 10 or 20 minutes based on how tired I am, which is hard since there's never really a time I feel like less than 20 minutes is enough. Honestly the true progress being made is that the REM-Dreamer is getting slightly less distracting with its very presence so I'll be able to sleep more normally soon.

 

So with that, I'll apologize for telling you guys to get your hopes up for me. Now you see (if you didn't before) why my hopes are un-get-up-able. There's always something. I mean, if you're still hyped for our imminent success, you're fine. I still don't see this not working at all. The apology is for those of you who hoped to see success in the first three days or so. I mean I did too, but I didn't expect it, was actually rather neutral on it.

 

Can you imagine how much trouble I'd have sleeping if I were actually emotionally invested? Like on an actual feeling-emotional level obviously, on the level that matters I'm more invested in this than anything else in my whole life.