Lumi's Dreaming Thread; Dreams of Moon

[Luminesce]

Interesting thing happened last night. With no special action before falling asleep for the 7th or so time last night.. Tewi? had a lucid dream.

 

Been playing Smash Ultimate like, a lot, all day the last two days (since release). Sleep schedule's been weird because of that, but last night was just a normal 9 hours of sleep after going to bed around 12:30AM. Around hour 7 we had a lucid dream, I forget exactly what happened but it went something like this: "That doesn't make any sense, I must be dreaming. I'm not even going to check, I just know I am." and strangely after a quick affirmation of it being so despite me being the one who went to sleep, Tewi was the one in the dream.

 

I don't remember exactly what she did, just that before she got very far she remembered she should be following protocol, so she focused on the dream (brought it to a bit more clarity), and then a few seconds later remembered to rub her hands together, which did a pretty good job of making the dream more vivid. I mean it was still relatively unclear, not super vivid or anything, but not as majorly foggy as right before. So this next part's a little weird, obviously our mind was still less than "totally awake" and still a bit dreamy since it was so hard for her to realize she should rub her hands together, but I don't really know how to talk around it, sooo. I'm just going to assume our ear was itchy IRL since it was in the dream, and Tewi had the strange idea to stick her finger basically through our whole head to assert that she was dreaming and not in reality. Thinking about it now it reminds me a lot of (what I've heard of) Personas, from the games, where characters would attempt to shoot themselves in the head to awaken their Persona from the fear it caused. Same thing was going on in the dream, there was fear that we'd hurt our eardrum or some such (logical thing to think..), but we've never actually strayed from ~perfect reality in our snippets of lucid dreaming, so this was actually rather important. And she did it, despite the fear we'd be hurt there was just the sense of our finger going straight through our whole head, not terribly realistic or anything, and I know it was weird as dreams often are - but, it was our first ever act of dream control, of asserting to the dream that reality was not necessarily at play and that we had control over it. Hopefully the feeling it created will help or even enable us to effect "unrealistic" events in the future - like, if you've been reading our posts enough, you'd know includes summoning my tulpas. The wall I've run into in our moments of lucidity is not being able to believe my tulpas would appear in front of me. All the want, but not the belief. And they've not lasted long enough for me to go to the wonderland where I'm "more likely" to see them.

 

I know it was a lucid dream and all, but I honestly can't remember what happened after. I'm sure Tewi was lucid for a bit longer, but only enough to like look around for a few moments, then I believe we woke up. Again hard to remember because I still slept two hours afterwards, that was somewhat early for a random lucid dream, whyever it happened. The next two weren't so lucid - I remember dreaming that Pit (Kid Icarus) was the son of the God of War, Kratos...

 

Tiniest bit worrying it's so hard to remember our brief lucid dreams, moreso exciting that we're actually having them at all. And a strange thing for sure that it was Tewi in the dream, despite her not even being the one fronting at the time (and we knew it, too). All other lucid dreams have been from my point of view. Lucilyn has had a few non-lucid dreams where she had my body but knew she was fronting though, and Tewi had one non-lucid with Lucilyn instead of her in it too.

 

Well, back to Smash Ultimate. Good progress I didn't expect.

[Guest Reilyn-Alley]

One of us had a dream, can't remember who but it seemed like at the end the scene was fading out and going dark so we were like "Oh, it's over. Well, better try to rewind it so we can run through it backwards and remember it better like people said to". In a mostly asleep state we didn't know how to rewind a dream so Lance (I assume), hits some kind of "pause" button like on a VCR, complete with the superimposed pause bars and blurriness then hits "rewind". No dream, just a savage splitting headache immediately that filled the whole front half of our brain and is still there when I'm writing this, though not as bad.

 

We tried to calm down or whatever and I had my first dream afterwords, or at least the first one I remember being in. No Lance. It was brief but I was in Persona 4, where people who see the truth about themselves reflected in a "shadow" version of them, freak out and deny it's existence, causing it to swell and power-up and turn into some twisted demon boss. The characters in the game defeat it to weaken it but ultimately the person it came from has to face it themselves and admit that yeah, though a bit exaggerated perhaps, that shadow is accurate and it a real part of them they just never wanted to admit.

 

So there I am looking at a "me" with darker hair, wispy tendrils tugging at the edge of her form and bright golden eyes.. And I just say "Sup?" and she says "Sup?" and there's an awkward silence.. Then I said "I already know you are me". And the shadow just nodded and said "Cool", and I nodded too and said "Yeah.. Cool". And we both kinda just stood around and fidgeted uncomfortably for another 30 seconds or so before the dream ended.

 

Have you guys ever experienced any kind of headache when messing with your dreams? In hindsight, I think we thought it was over but the dream was actually transitioning to something else and we took control of it in an accidental way and it backfired or something. I wouldn't call it lucid, more like we reached out and messed with one thing that at the time made sense "review dream = rewind dream" and boom, nasty headache.

[Luminesce]

I only ever get headaches from being sedentary too long, generally looking at a screen, especially if I had to read a lot. Also rarely if I eat really greasy/crappy foods, usually like Carl's Jr. Gotta be honest, can't really see getting a headache from anything dreaming related, more likely to be from dehydration/sleeping with your neck at a weird angle/sleeping too long/sleeping too little/focusing too hard or getting too excited or stressed. But who knows, brains do weird stuff.

[Lucilyn]

[video=youtube]

[hidden]I set a watch

For five o' clock

I think of trees and rivers

As I'm drifting off

I pinch my wrist

(Just to tell where I am)

I get a twinge

(Seems as real as it can)

But I remain and so I know

The rest is up to me

 

At night

The sunlight beats upon my skin

In here I see everything

And until the morning comes

I feel it

 

All my life I tried

To find the time to make believe

But now as certain as the seasons

I know real life will get in between

If I never get

To decide my reality

At least I see how it could be

When I get round to sleeping

(Sleeping)

Dreaming

(Dreaming)

Works for me

 

And though my soul

(Lets me do what I want)

Is pretty bold

(In a place I belong)

From time to time my grip'll slip

And I just lose control

Then awake I freeze

But nothing in my head can hurt me

However real it seems

 

All my life I tried

To find the time to make believe

But now as certain as the seasons

I know real life will get in between

If I never get

To decide my reality

At least I see how it could be

When I get round to sleeping

(Sleeping)

Dreaming

(Dreaming)

Get round to sleeping

(Sleeping)

Dreaming

(Dreaming)

Oh[/hidden]

[Luminesce]

https://community.tulpa.info/thread-full-promises?pid=229214#pid229214

[Luminesce]

Last night, literally every time I woke up (starting at 2 hours in fact) I was "too awake" to bother putting the mask on. This made me a little suspicious. I'm currently theorizing that on days where I'm awake for less than 16 hours, when I do eventually fall asleep I might have more "active" time between sleep cycles than on days where I was up for 17+. Up 'til now I've considered it random and paid it little mind, but since it's extremely relevant for making the REM-Dreamer work, I'm looking into it more. 2019 is my deadline for lucid dreaming right now, so I can spare a day or two looking into this possible mechanic of our sleep. If I can create more opportunities to use the REM-Dreamer by staying awake for ~17 hours first.. well, I will. The odd other side of this is that being more awake in between REM should actually result in more vivid dreams, but I suppose if I'm using the REM-D instead of relying on Dream Induced Lucid Dreams it doesn't matter. Being able to fall asleep quickly once I have the mask on is my main priority. That means tonight I'll be going to sleep after.. what, 14-15 hours of being awake? To test if my hypothesis is correct.

 

Have a nice {Entire album} this time. Yes, every single song is a Touhou theme remix, for those of you unfamiliar with Touhou music. Touhou remixes/arranges make up most of the music we listen to.

[Guest Reilyn-Alley]

For some reason I can't seem to find this.. My google-fu is weak right now. Do you guys know if when you go to bed matters? Assuming blocking out light isn't an issue so, darkness, do late shift people like Lance and me, who go to bed at 4-5am and get up at 12-1pm have the same sleep cycles as someone who sleeps from like 11pm to 7am? Are we equally able to have dreams and exploit cycles and stuff for lucid dreaming, just from a general body sleeping type thing? I guess.. Generally speaking, can people be expected to have the same REM cycles and dream opportunities no matter what time they go to bed?

[Luminesce]

Most people are pretty similar. Some people differ. Rarely they might even have an entirely different sleep cycle, not by default though. Polyphasic sleep for example.

 

If you guys are blocking out light correctly, preferably using F.lux (how many times have I linked this in this thread?) if you intend to stick to a strict schedule, and always go to sleep and wake up roughly around the same time, your sleep schedule should be the same as basically anyone else's. Sunlight is the biggest factor for when people get tired or wake up, F.lux can help with that though (generally, to prevent light from computer screens from keeping you up late).

 

What I've learned mostly from Steve Pavlina though is that your brain can adapt to getting less sleep if your sleep schedule is perfectly strict. And inversely, letting yourself sleep in makes your brain lazier and both falling asleep and using that sleep well. Someone like me.. well, I don't get tired of day 1 with any amount of sleep, but someone like me who sleeps ~10 hours every day might be tired sleeping for only 7 hours whereas I know people who sleep only 7 hours a day every day on a perfect schedule who do just fine.

 

Definitely varies by person, though. Generally you want 8 hours of sleep, 16 hours of being awake. That completes the 24 hour cycle and avoids most problems. Since I so often sleep in, I also end up drifting my sleep schedule forwards over time, it's a little silly and why you'll see posts from us at pretty random times over the months.

 

Anyways, "when" you go to bed doesn't matter if accounting for consistency and daylight. Aside from any weird problems or difference you could have unrelated to that sleeping schedule, you should be the same as everyone else. Note that while the majority of all people follow some really similar patterns for REM sleep and such, things like whether you have brief periods of awakening at night like us or not are random and down to your biology. Most people don't, even though we all have times where we're closer to being awake before going back to deep sleep and all.

[Luminesce]

Well I slept about the same, was a bit hard to tell because my little sister had a friend over for a sleepover and they were awake at both 2:30AM and 9AM, somehow. But it was more or less the same, too awake (too long before falling back asleep) to use the mask. I've been up for like 14 hours again, trying one more time to make sure it's consistent. Then I'll stay up however long I can the next day (probably 18 or more) to try and get closer to a normal sleep schedule again (just general benefits while trying lucid dream induction) and, of course, have stayed up more than 16 hours to see how that works.

 

Buuut, fair warning, after staying up all through the night I usually don't sleep for very long. Body gets kind of messed up on whether it's day or night I guess. So it could be up to three more days before I've got a good chance to try and use the REM-Dreamer again, we'll see. Aiming for a lucid dream on/by Christmas if that wasn't clear. Or new years or my birthday (Jan 2nd), although that's too late by my standards. We'll see.

[Guest]

If i don't get enough sleep, adrenaline takes over, so i feel more awake. I took a nap after 8&1/2 hours sleep, today after 5 i'm buzzing and wide awake.