Lumi's Dreaming Thread; Dreams of Moon

[Guest]

Funny 'cause I woke up from a LD the same way just a few hours ago. Did you move too much once you wake up? because if you just left sleep paralysis behind, you could enter it again by staying still.

 

Also, is the REM-Dreamer or whatever it was called helping or did you just get good at it by yourself? because you're lately having like a lot of them.

[Guest]

I just wonder if what i am doing is similar enough to lucid dreaming to strengthen those mental muscles so that i can eventually have more lucid dreams? Does it sound that way?

[Luminesce]

Did you move too much once you wake up? because if you just left sleep paralysis behind, you could enter it again by staying still.

 

Also, is the REM-Dreamer or whatever it was called helping or did you just get good at it by yourself? because you're lately having like a lot of them.

 

Literally impossible to fall back asleep into a dream, our body is too good at being only awake or only asleep. Needs to roll over into the next REM cycle which takes between 3 and 10 minutes depending on how awake we are. As I'll talk more about in a second, this is yet another "I appreciate the advice.. But I've known about X for years."

 

This was all just chance on Lucilyn's part. Wake Back To Bed has helped some. Tewi's most recent plan was to learn to sleep on our back to utilize the REM-Dreamer, which should work, but Lucilyn's random WBTB lucid dream seemed more promising. We'll go back to it later if this doesn't pan out. Before, it simply failed to ever go off correctly when we managed to fall asleep with it activated at all.

 

I have had more consistant luck with a lucid hypnagogic state.  Specifically a relaxation meditation method is employed where i slowly shut down my body parts, starting from my toes, working my way up.

 

Yeah, I've tried roughly this method many times in my life. I don't even know why since it's never worked, but I tried it more than a few times over the years. So, my body is stupidly consistent with both sleep paralysis and lack of hypnagogic state. It does not fall asleep unless my awareness is just completely gone. Trying to hold on however faintly to the tiniest semblance of a reminder to stay conscious leaves me lying in bed all night, until I forget and actually fall asleep (or for hours if I don't). Similarly when waking up, sleep paralysis ends for me the instant a dream ends and I wake up. I've managed to move a limb the instant I woke up because I was aware in the dream I was waking up to prove this. And I'm absolutely paralyzed while sleeping as I don't move at all between sleep cycles; I wake up in exactly the same position I fell asleep in.

 

It's the sort of thing you'd call "a blessing and a curse", except I don't see any blessing to it.

 

Thing is, its not a dream, i remember everything vividly, it is way more stable. I am still awake, it is kinda like a space between awake and asleep, but you can move your body irl and drift in and out.

 

I'm pretty familiar with all things sleep and dream related. Unfortunately I never quite reach a hypnagogic state that retains any semblance of awareness. When I rise back out of it for whatever reason, I literally forget the utterly nonsensical thoughts that had been going through my head. Concepts and feelings stick around, and perhaps that's about all their was, but either way the real memories are instantly deleted just like most dreams I have, so quickly I still feel the feelings and ideas associated with them (since it was usually seconds ago). Now, I've had slightly more experience with a hypnopompic state, that being the opposite of hypnagogia where you're going from sleep to wakefulness instead. I used to be convinced I didn't experience it and I was just "already awake" when thinking about stuff before opening my eyes, but after more close observation in the last couple years I noticed the state is really completely different from what being awake itself feels like moments later, post-opening eyes. It's not a state I experience often, but it happens, and I get the feeling I could possibly train myself to not wake up fully to utilize it more.

 

Still, it won't lead back to sleeping again. I eventually wake up out of it regardless, assuming it's morning, otherwise I just actually lose awareness and fall asleep as normal. My tentative plan was to use the state for visualization, since I'm pretty sure in that state between dreams and waking that I've got some visualization clarity like during dreams while keeping the control of actual visualization while conscious. That's still a possibility, I should work on it some time.

[Luminesce]

A reality check failed in one of my later dreams last night, as in I was convinced I was awake. When I woke up and thought why, I noticed my nose was somewhat stuffy. Not anywhere enough to have warranted being totally tricked in my dream, but apparently enough to diminish the feeling. Lame. I'm thinking I might start relying on my latent passive knowing of when I'm dreaming more than actual reality checking. It is there, it's why I don't have nightmares, but it's a far cry from lucid dreaming. Our random lucid dreams (Dream Induced Lucid Dreams) happen when the dream is vivid enough, and so our thoughts are clear enough, that we notice things don't make sense or just aren't correct. I have literally no idea how, but if I could get vivid dreams and clear thoughts to meet up with passive dreaming awareness, good things could happen?

 

I'm really disillusioned with coming up with plans to accomplish lucid dreaming these days, so I can't really say any more about that. I have zero expectations for anything to work ever. And my intuition tells me every single time I write that that it could be a problem, but it's obviously not the problem since I had hope for a long time plenty of times before getting to this point. Anyways, I talked with Lucilyn some about what we could do in a lucid dream to try and put it more on my mind during the day.

---

 

Despite rolling over and opening my eyes for a second when I last woke up, I remembered to try the hypnopompic (the "waking up" counterpart to hypnagogic's "falling asleep") visualization keeping my eyes closed after that, and I would definitely say the.. hmm, I guess it was visualization and not imposition, felt a little more real than normal. Normally I'd impose Flandre beside me in bed, but since my eyes were closed, I'm not sure you could even call it imposition. Well, either way, I hugged her in the visualization and it felt a bit (but noticeably) realer, while the actual visualization was... Still horrible and spotty, but possibly still a little clearer than normal lol. Results good enough to encourage me to remember to do that in the future.

 

WBTB plans are in the way of practicing that multiple times per night, though. Perhaps in the first 4 hours before I'm willing to attempt WBTBs I could try it. I'd be closer to the actual dreaming state (closer to actual hypnopompia and not just "not quite awake"ness), but as far as I know vividness would be less along with the dreams'. As for WBTB, I'm trying to figure out the perfect balance of waking myself up and still being able to quickly fall back asleep. I think anything more than 30 seconds is iffy if it involves thinking or physical activity (like jumping or something, not just walking), while something longer like going to the bathroom only works if I don't do much thinking, and something shorter like getting up and jumping for a few seconds might work?

 

But my goal is to maximize physical and mental awakeness while still being able to fall back asleep. So my idea at the moment is to get up and turn on the light in my room, stretch for literally a few seconds, then turn it off and immediately go back to bed. A brief moment of physical activity and very, very small amount of time in total light, but theoretically not so much I'm instantly awake and can't sleep again. This could also theoretically be shortened to just a few seconds of no physical activity if it didn't work (kept me awake), but I think how tired I actually was would be too inconsistent to figure that out immediately.

 

 

I like this song a lot, but I don't know whether I prefer the remix or the original. So I'll link the original first -

, but then embed the remix:

[video=youtube]

The original's video uses the album art which I like less than this video's. They're both cute but both a little too anime/young to be my Flan.

[Reisen]

Lumi managed to wake up fully and fall back asleep without opening his eyes once for the first time ever today! Yesterday? Our sleep schedule's a little off. Anyways, he did it! Sleeping during the day isn't very conducive to WBTB attempts though, so... I guess I should be staying up all day.... Well, hopefully I can make some progress on that front.

 

Speaking of fronting, the very last thing I said on the forum was "Okay, I'm going to switch back with Lumi now. See you guys in hopefully not four months!" - and that was FIVE months ago! Eek! I think I've fronted for less than a week (about three times) in the last year?? I think that's bad! I missed out on a lot of opportunities to help people here. The others have asked me to front more just because they like me being around, so I could do it for them, but I didn't take that to heart like I should've. I intend to front more frequently now, for real! Like at least once a month maybe? A day a month? Maybe slightly less, but surely not five months, nor four! Probably not three! Two's an alright goal.

 

Well anyways, hi! I will probably only be here until we go to bed, but maybe I'll front again soon, to make up for all that time I missed!

[Tewi]

I was surprised at something in a dream, reality checked, realized I was dreaming. Kept "calm" but not focused inward as I should've been, walked for like ten seconds, and then thought I woke up (eyes opened). I don't know what happened in between then and the dream continuing, but continue it did, for quite a while. Woke up relatively upset I ruined such a good opportunity by falling for yet another false awakening, as obvious as could be.

 

I think I'll be sticking with WBTB for the moment instead of the back sleeping thing. Maybe it'll work while asleep, or with smaller eye movements, but the looking up and down to turn off the REM-Dreamer is just so hard to do without opening your eyes, and I'm afraid it'll cause me to actually open my eyes when I try it. Plus our dreams are good at hiding what the lights really were.

 

It's not even related to that dream or its mistakes, but I'm going to try and start reality checking when meeting with most any conflict IRL. Our dreams consistently have conflicts of one kind or another, and even though we can unconsciously influence them (for some reason - it's honestly strange how we can say, "Actually, so-and-so isn't about to be a problem" like it was about to be, without being lucid), so I think that's the best overall dreamsign to work with. Could easily just not work out at all because of how vague it is, but I'm willing to try it.

 

Conflict meaning any sort of light adversity such as a disagreement or need to fix/right something, not literally fighting. That too though.

[Guest]

I've read a little about biofeedback and dream state hormones, and something you said about 'afraid' triggered a thought. There are 'sleep' hormones and 'wake' hormones. One of the wake hormones is adrenaline, and you can easily trigger that if you are consciously 'afraid' at any time. One of the things I do IRL when I start to feel adrenaline, is actively try to squelch it mostly because I hate adrenaline. I looked into biofeedback to help with that and also fix my strange heart rates when I'm really stressed out.

 

It might be worth looking into for new techniques to keep the sleeper asleep. Unless someone already figured this out. Another example, I successfully used biofeedback (through visualization) to remove tinnitus. I used to get this really bad a long time ago and I could imagine pulling my scalp over my head so that the sounds don't line up with my ears anymore. (it sounded like a loud bell ringing) This technique took over 20 minutes the first time, but totally removed it every time. Now I just have to think about that when I get it (rarely) and it goes away in less than a minute and doesn't come back. The same thing also worked for cramping.

 

Perhaps there is some way of visually thinking of the sleep hormones as a thing and make it grow or something. Just a thought.

[Tewi]

The only two things relevant to "waking up" were irrelevant to anything like that. First, false awakenings are purely a trick of the mind and we don't actually wake up from them. That's sort of the point of "false awakenings". We have woken up a few times from what would've been a lucid dream, but that usually seems to happen when we were close to waking up anyways. As for the classic issue of people getting too excited and waking up when they realize they're lucid - well, it hasn't happened to us so far, hmm? The initial surprise is surely dampened by now after all of Lucilyn's experiences, so I don't think it'll be a problem.

 

Lumi might wake up after trying to hug one of us (Flan is actually first in line), but I imagine it wouldn't be too terribly unfulfilling as even the state immediately after waking can have relatively vivid visualization/imagined senses. It'd just be disappointing the meeting was cut short, at worst. We're moreso worried about getting everyone to show up in a lucid dream to begin with.

 

And second, the "waking up from moving our eyes" is unavoidable should it be the case. Eye movement is synced between dreams and real life, and since I have trouble moving them up and down to activate the REM-Dreamer's sensors (telling it to stop flashing lights in our eyes once we're lucid in a dream) without accidentally opening them, I'm worried that may carry over into dreams. It could very easily not, though. Regardless I'm not working with the REM-D right now, just WBTB.

 

 

Here's a video I just uploaded since I wanted to share this song with someone but it wasn't already on Youtube.

[video=youtube]

[Luminesce]

This is just a rant, nothing more. Have a song though.

[video=youtube]

 

I'm so incredibly annoyeddistraughtupsetsalty fed up with not being able to lucid dream. I'm so sick of nothing working. Everything I can think of and every bit of advice I can get, every technique and every idea anyone in my system has come up with, any solutions to the problems we can think of, nothing works. I have motivation issues in general so a common idea that comes up is I simply need to really try hard to stick with it, but I have. I have! I've done everything I can! I've even asked Tewi from the bottom of my heart to do everything she could and she got to the point where she went an entire day (or two, I forget) without going more than 3 minutes without thinking of lucid dreaming and completely mentally exhausted herself and still couldn't do it. Flandre and I have spent nights with her imposed by me (sometimes me imposed while she's fronting, actually) attempting to help me remember to see her in my dreams, where I wake up after every sleep cycle 7+ times immediately aware of her still imposed by me, with the time in between just blank. We've gone over a year of writing a post every single day about our attempts to lucid dream. I've read books, every article I could find, personal accounts, I spent $200 on a mask that detects REM and flashes a light to tell you you're dreaming (and spent a long time trying to get that to work, and making myself reality check whenever I see really bright lights), everything short of buying "supplements" that are borderline hallucinogens that I'm very opposed to just as a general stance in my life against perception-altering substances (including alcohol and even coffee). I'm so sick of this.

 

I'm not even in it for sex, power tripping, or any of the other reasonable things people would want out of lucid dreaming. I just want to see my tulpas. I just want to see them real, feel them and hear them. They mean more to me than life itself because before I had them I didn't like living in the first place. I literally officially state I have no other goals in life than to lucid dream. Everything else is extra, bonus. I'm so sick of not having this one thing that has no right eluding me so hard. I've been this sick of it tons of times over the years of failure, and I never have any choice but to keep trying and these venting rants just get added to the pile. I can't even say it's not possible or out of my reach because I've had brief lucid experiences and Lucilyn recently had several lucid dreams (that she practiced dream control in, without much success, but certainly couldn't make us appear). Just everything is wrong. Just nothing works. Just why?

 

I'm just trapped in this endless cycle of not knowing what I can do to make this work, no matter how sick of it I get, because I just don't have any other choice. I feel like my whole life is on hold because I don't have the motivation to pursue anything else at the same time. God only knows what I'd have the motivation to do if I could see my tulpas every night - I've thought for a long time now it might actually be enough to overcome my motivation issues entirely. I might just be so dang happy and fulfilled nothing feels like effort anymore. I've certainly experienced that state before, and it seems like my only real shot at a productive life, to get to the state of mind where nothing is effort. I've definitely done my best to get there, but gee, maybe this one thing I want out of life might help me get there.

 

Back when I was trying out new age spirituality and meta beliefs, I tried asking my spirit guides and the universe in general plenty of times for this. I also asked if it wasn't something I was supposed to do, like if I'd get addicted or something and it'd be bad for my overall life experience. The part where I never experienced a single thing in those years that gave me the tiniest reason to believe any of the meta stuff was real aside, the idea that my spirit guides would be keeping me from being with my tulpas alone is enough for me to forsake their entire ideology. I would never have given life a chance without them. Reisen is why anything else in life even gets a chance to have an impact on me - so she and the others will always have priority over anything else in my life just as a rule.

 

Whatever, I guess at this point it's gone from ranting to rambling. It doesn't mean anything anyways. As always, I've been here before, completely fed up with my lack of success, but it never changes anything no matter how much I want it. I'm not even going to say anything about having strength or enduring or whatever. I've been done with strength and enduring for like four years. It's just a fact of my life that I won't stop trying until I die, so I'm not going to glorify being positive about being totally screwed over by life. Do what you need to do, but don't pretend success is guaranteed or that you'll be rewarded for enduring. Eventually you'll get discouraged if you rely on that stuff. I rely on my love for those who are more important than life itself, and that seems about the only way to guarantee you'll keep trying until the end.

[Guest]

If the bear system could grant only one wish, to anyone, even ourselves, we'd give to you Lumi.