Lumi's Dreaming Thread; Dreams of Moon

[Luminesce]

Well, nothing from Christmas through my birthday (today, about to be over though). A few days ago I struggled to fall back asleep with the REM-Dreamer on for an unknown amount of time, because I did fall asleep, and dreamt the mask was going off and I had to reset it. Obviously I was unable to make it stop going off though, how annoying!.. Yeah, I now have to reality check when resetting the timer in the night unable to fall asleep in case I've actually already fallen asleep, and practice what I would do in the scenario of becoming lucid in basically pitch black darkness in my room, sigh.

 

Good and bad. Good - that means I successfully fell asleep with the mask on and active, and it then recognized I was dreaming and I saw the alerts in the dream without immediately waking up on even the second cue. Bad is worse - from waking to waking again, that dream time was less than 40 minutes despite being at like hour 8, possibly as little as 20 minutes.* That means even though I was successful at falling asleep with the mask on and turned on and timed correctly, my body still decided to sleep for less time than it should've. As always, that's tied to my ability to always wake up on time. Even if I wake up at 8:16 and need to be awake by 8:50, I can usually still fall back asleep and wake up at like 8:48 or sooner (sometimes as little as like 16 minutes?) having actually dreamed and naturally woken up and all. Adaptable sleeping times.. aren't to my advantage, trying to lucid dream. Just another layer of difficulty on top of all the others, like my body's ability to perfectly fall asleep and wake up exclusively when my mind has also fallen asleep or woken up, ie at the same time (makes sleep paralysis impossible). These things all seem pretty cool, until you add the context of wanting to lucid dream more than anything. Then they're just unfortunate.

 

*The fact that I can naturally, with no special effort or scheduling or habits or whatever, fall asleep and wake up roughly 20 minutes later having actually dreamed, proves it's possible to have a full REM cycle that only lasts, you know, like 20 minutes. A lot of people don't believe in ""uberman"" sleeping, aka polyphasic sleep, but this is firsthand proof of concept for me. Of course it'd still take tons of effort and strict habits to get to the point where your mind allows you to sleep polyphasically instead of all at once (monophasic), so that zombie period of the first week or two is still necessary, but.. well, it seems real anyway.

 

---

 

Well anyways, I don't feel like doing anything "special" because of the new year like I'd planned as a backup 20 days ago. Thought about it, but honestly just using the REM-Dreamer seems very promising, I've even got spare batteries for it. Hopefully the strap doesn't get too loose as it's already as tight as I can make it, but I guess figuring out how to replace/fix it wouldn't be the end of the world. Sure won't be the end of the $170 I paid for it.

 

Lucilyn apparently misses sleeping - she keeps fronting (I'm afraid to say this word now - we just use it to mean being-switched, no pseudo-switching/possession nonsense) and wanting to go to sleep but having to switch back with me, so I can be the one to lucid dream. Funny since I had another lucid experience the day after the missed-REM-Dreamer-signals dream that was actually from Tewi's perspective. I don't even know what she did aside from affirm she was herself - rub her hands together and wake up? Who even cares anymore, DILD is a waste of hope and time. It's completely off my list for now. We've had so many 10 second lucid dreams I can't make myself care about a possible half-length lucid dream anymore. REM-Dreamer should be a good 75% at minimum, likely even more since I've got the REM-detection-sensitivity set to max, reliant mainly on the timer before it's able to go off.

 

Pretty sure I'm just sticking with the REM-Dreamer every night (or so, some nights just offer no opportunities) until we finally lucid dream now. I see no reason to ever stop since it promises the best results and has had proven chances to have induced a ~full length lucid dream that I simply missed due to lack of practice.

[Srn347]

Happy birthday Lumi. Glad to hear you're doing so well with the lucid dreaming, 75% success rate with the mask sounds pretty great.

[Guest Reilyn-Alley]

Happy b-day Lumi! You have a legacy of all this, you are like the legendary Lucid Lumi and deserve ALL the dreams! <3

 

Ugh, we have this nasty habit of waking up after 4 or 5 hours sleeping for some reason sometimes then that seems to be it. Like, our body just calls it done and sometimes we have to lay awake for a solid 2 to 3 hours before we get anything again. On work days that's almost all the time we had set aside to sleep.. It's annoying and ends up making us more tired in the long run, but does that guarantee we sleep soundly the next night? Nope. Might just be the same thing again.

 

As for "fronting (I'm afraid to say this word now - we just use it to mean being-switched, no pseudo-switching/possession nonsense)", yeah that's fair. We still can't switch, it's one of those things that seems like it's going to take a realistic amount of time to learn unlike a bunch of other stuff we got lucky and stumbled upon. I'm taking the old guard's definition of it and nope, I can't. It's something close to it, but as an all-or-nothing thing, it's nothing. What the heck do I call it though when I'm the one running the show while he is still watching and pretty much drifted out, emotionally detached and not part of things? It's all me and he is still there but just passively, but not in a "tulpa like state". Is it just a degree of possession? We both feel "front" but I usually say main or primary to try and differentiate. :P

 

I might have asked this before(?) but do you think you are having lucid dreams and just not remembering them? Do you remember all/most of your dreams? Would a LD be any easier to recall?

[Ember.Vesper]

I used a NovaDreamer for a while almost twenty years ago, when I wasn't much younger than you, Lumi. It never caused any lucid dreams, though I did have several lucid dreams around that time, because I was interested in them. I found the mask uncomfortable and the controls arcane. I just checked and was shocked to see the proliferation of different types and brands of lucid dreaming masks while I wasn't paying attention. It isn't a priority right now, but if I could use an easy computer interface to change mask settings, I might be willing to give it another go.

 

I know I've taken an opposing stance from you in the co-fronting discussion, but I've only ever used "fronting" as you use it here. Fronting is what you are doing after having switched; switching is changing who is fronting. We've sometimes said "switched in" instead, if we thought "fronting" would be interpreted incorrectly by those who use it differently.

 

We had the same 4-5 hour problem, Reilyn, and addressed it by drawing on the techniques here:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy_for_insomnia

 

In my experience, lucid dream memories are much more vivid and durable than regular dream memories, but are still subject to at least as much fading and uncertainty as waking memories. But then if I didn't remember the dream that morning, I can't confirm whether or not it ever happened.

 

-Ember

[Luminesce]

Happy birthday Lumi. Glad to hear you're doing so well with the lucid dreaming, 75% success rate with the mask sounds pretty great.

 

Oh you. "We've had so many 10 second lucid dreams I can't make myself care about a possible half-length lucid dream anymore. REM-Dreamer should be a good 75% at minimum,"

I meant 75% of the dream, not dreams, being lucid, whereas with Dream Induced Lucid Dreams it tends to be about 3% of the dream lucid - the last 10 seconds.

 

I know I've taken an opposing stance from you in the co-fronting discussion, but I've only ever used "fronting" as you use it here.

 

Actually, your views and discussions have been the most reasonable of anyone so entirely from a different background than tulpamancy as we know it on this forum. Well, you and FallFamily. Anyways, that's a very good thing, you're not causing any conflict so don't worry about it. And yes, times have changed since the NovaDreamer. The REM-Dreamer has Two-Way-Communication so I can make it stop annoyingly flashing in my dreams by moving my eyes up and down a few times. My only complaint is I wish it was left-right instead; practicing moving my eyes up and down makes me open them a bit as opposed to left and right. I'm just hoping I never accidentally wake up from opening my eyes like that in a lucid dream...

 

What the heck do I call it though when I'm the one running the show while he is still watching and pretty much drifted out, emotionally detached and not part of things? It's all me and he is still there but just passively, but not in a "tulpa like state". Is it just a degree of possession? We both feel "front" but I usually say main or primary to try and differentiate. :P

 

As tempting as it is to call that co-fronting, I'd sooner say it's possession. But the difference is in how much of the body's thoughts you're in charge of, I guess. If you're the one thinking all its thoughts, responding to basic sensory input and all, then it's would-be switching, but co-fronting if your host can't dissociate. But it's pretty common for full-body-possessing tulpas to get so used to being in the front the host is basically "AFK" while they do stuff. This probably isn't switching. But this stuff is always messy business, and the lines do blur especially with advanced full-body-possession where the host still hasn't dissociated. It's hard to say for someone else's system just how close they are or aren't to switching, like Beatles' system. Chances are they've just mentally carved out another type of control switching that we have no term for. Theoretically there's infinite ways something like that could go though, so it's not like we want to make a new term every time someone doesn't fit. Maybe co-fronting will just have to become a tulpamancy term if new systems keep getting stuck in that state.

 

I might have asked this before(?) but do you think you are having lucid dreams and just not remembering them? Do you remember all/most of your dreams? Would a LD be any easier to recall?

 

We remember bits of our latest (hours 6-10 usually, depending on when we actually get up) dreams, nearly always remember lucid experiences upon waking (they tend to end with us waking, otherwise they could be forgotten like a normal dream, preferably not), and would remember a true lucid dream. We remember dreams better when they were more vivid/conscious (more thinking), and lucid dreams are the pinnacle of that. The only lucid experiences (a while ago, we called them lucid moments lol) we've almost forgotten were Dream-Induced-Lucid-Dreams where we were lucid but fell back into non-lucidity and the dream played out for however long. There were maybe two that we didn't immediately recall upon waking, usually within 10 minutes of being awake though.

 

Anyways, we won't not remember a real lucid dream, it's just not going to happen no. Even random snippets from totally forgotten dreams come to me from time to time during the day when I look at like my comb in the bathroom or something, so pretending I somehow forgot (impossible) meeting my tulpas, I'd remember when I saw them that day lol.

[Tewi]

We're trying to establish a uniform sleeping schedule, along with our brother who really needs it. Waking up in the 8AMs every single day, sleeping at a variable time. Yes, we've really been doing nothing but that for the last 8 days lol. Been waking up so tired it's hard not to go back to bed, since we've been sleeping 6-7 hours every day. Body and brain will learn how long they have to sleep soon enough. Actually, I went to sleep at 10PM yesterday and woke up at 6:30AM willing enough to get up, so that time should be right about now. Slept another two hours though, both to make sure the body gets ~8:30 is the correct time to be up and to dream more. The last two dreams I had were certainly higher quality than the ones we've been having for the last week. Not that it was in doubt, but there's definitely a marked difference past 8 hours of sleep in dream length and vividity. But the only way we'll get more than 8.5 hours of sleep on this schedule is by going to sleep earlier than normal, which is really up to how our body feels (and probably whether we've gotten more than 8 hours of sleep a night the last two days).

 

Should be fine, though. Hour 5 is our target for putting the REM-Dreamer on. Not quite yet, as as I said we've been tired as heck after getting up (at first all day, then for about an hour, today not really at all) so didn't want to waste any potential sleep. But soon, hopefully.

 

Gotta admit though, going back to sleep still sounds nice. Our brain isn't used to not sleeping in yet. We have reason to believe from things we've read that it'll get there, and that allowing yourself to sleep in teaches your brain it's okay to be inefficient with the sleep time it has and leads to sleeping longer. Since we naturally sleep like ten hours a day on our ever-rotating sleep schedule, that seems believable.

[Tewi]

I fixed all of the broken video URLs in the first few pages of the thread. This one I had to reupload on my own channel.. Anyways, if you ever see a broken video URL in our thread (or I suppose any broken URL at all), please inform us so we can fix it. Obviously we don't constantly reread old posts in our thread, but if you do, tell us what needs fixing.

[Lucilyn]

I'm so beyond tired right now...

 

so I went to sleep around 11 or so and then for whatever reason woke up at 5AM instead of 8:30 basically awake and couldn't fall back asleep after 40 minutes, so I just got up, and I REGRET IT because for the last few hours (like 1PM+) I've just been dead tired BUT if I go to sleep I could mess up our sleeping schedule so I have to make it as long as I can

 

just had to write a massive post (go through the thread and I assure you you'll have no doubts which I'm referring to when you see it) 'cus I would've felt bad leaving the discussion where it was and needed to stay up anyway, but I swear by the end when I was proofreading it I saw lines of text movin' around.. I think I'm going to go to sleep at about 5PM now, but HEY at least that post took TWO HOURS to write and kept me up for longer l0l

 

This song! just finished listening to it.. posted it like 60 pages ago but man, them "echooose~" at the end are like laying on a floating bed of feathers right now, feels so soft and zzzzz

[video=youtube]

 

I really hope I can actually stay up long enough tomorrow to not break our schedule, we're doing so well...

 

Lumi edit: Fixed the video to a looped version with some cross-fading after 6 minutes, that hopefully won't be removed so we don't have to fix this video a THIRD time. The ending doesn't sound as good like this (it's what "Echooose~" was referencing), but it'll have to do.

[Luminesce]

I guess it's been long enough since the last post, and has been long enough for the last like 20 days. I don't know if I said so, but we spent.. over a month now, but a month keeping a very strict sleeping schedule of waking up around 8:30-9:30AM every day. After a brief intermission, our brother is no longer being woken up by us every day at the same time and we're now waking up at ~8:20AM every day.

 

More specifically, during that intermission Tewi decided (since no dreaming progress was being made) the best thing we could do was to wake up at about 7:00+ every day, briefly be awake, and then go back to sleep for one more hour(*) after that, hopefully as a WBTB. Well, we've been waking up around 7:30 just fine, but not able to go back to sleep for a decent amount of time even if we don't get up to WBTB. It's not working great, but at least the schedule's being easy to keep up finally. The first literal entire month of getting up at 8:30AM every day was very difficult, we'd be tired for hours every single day basically. I guess the schedule's working now though. I didn't think a basic sleeping schedule shift like that would take equivalent adjustment time to switching to polyphasic sleep... but I guess it did.

 

A week or so ago, Flandre had a night or two of very good dream recall compared to the nights (weeks) before. From that day we've been trying to work on dream recall again (done with the sleep schedule part, which is basically all the progress we made for a month and a half, hence no posts here). Except the dream recall got worse the day after and days later it's still rather poor, down to only the last third or so of a single dream last night.

 

That being said, we just established a new habit both of trying to recall dreams in the morning (which is only to help with-) and, at some point in the middle of every day, the fronter setting aside some time with one of the others (or today was both Tewi and Lucilyn I guess) and telling them whatever dreams they could remember from the previous night. Which as I said, was the last third of only one dream last night unfortunately. Still, the habit is important. DILD-wise (all lucid dreams up to this point), dream vividity is king, but we've had some relatively vivid dreams where we remembered conscious thoughts going on in the dream, but still didn't realize we were dreaming. I'd say that's because we're thinking in those dreams just like we do in everyday waking life - not as we are right before or after falling asleep. That, plus the fact that right after waking up (many times throughout the night etc.) we always remember more of our dreams than we do after waking up for real, and even then remember a bit more details than if we try to recall the same dream later on, means there's a need for dream recall to be practiced in the middle of the day and not just upon waking (to help connect our waking thoughts to the dream state).

 

 

Two interesting side things. First, Flandre had a "lucid"? dream just over a week ago.. Insofar as, in the dream she was browsing a little "cornerside store"'s wares (although it was really a shop set up in the middle of a school), and the shopkeep was showing her like seven or so different colored shirts that apparently had a unique.. object? Souvenir? wrapped inside each of them. She'd only gotten through a few when she thought she'd be waking up soon, and told the shopkeep that, and asked her to tell the "school staff" or something along those lines (specifically tell "them") not to let her wake up yet. Had the feeling of when others talk directly to their subconscious or whatever I presume. The shopkeep said alright, I'll tell them, and Flan got through like three or so more shirts before just waking up before getting to the last one. Flan herself was unsure of whether she hadn't really realized she was lucid dreaming, or if she'd simply not panicked and tried to see us since we've temporarily set aside that goal in lieu of simply exploring lucid dreams trying to make them last longer. Truly, there were more important things to be thinking about even so than whatever filler fluff the dream was giving her, but also she obviously knew she was dreaming (more than we normally do) and wanted not to wake up, and didn't (the real difference from normal) for like another minute as opposed to 5 seconds. So it's hard to say what exactly happened. There was certainly no direct realization of it being a lucid dream, as protocol still exists and needs to be followed, but it still might've just been the influence from my telling myself not to panic and squander future lucid dream opportunities by trying to see them before we've gotten more proficient at just existing in lucid dreams.

 

Second, the * from up there^. I recently had to look up how long the average REM cycle was, and it's apparently.. 90 minutes?! Not like 60 tops? I've been under the impression for a long time that initial sleep cycles in the night were 45 minutes and they slowly went up to maybe 90 minutes after 9 hours of sleep, or something. But supposedly the "average" length is 90 minutes. I wasn't able to find much more detailed information on wikipedia or the other top results on google and was (am, huh) just too lazy to try and look into it further, but if any of you have a good source on how long sleep/REM cycles last (preferably including information on the first four or so, not just hour 8's), I'd like to read that.

 

Because I'm pretty sure at no point do I sleep for more than 75 or so minutes, and frequently I'll wake up after hour 8 or 9 of sleep only 50-70 minutes later than when I last saw the clock. Which sounds close and 90's just "average" and all, but - 90 is absolutely out of the question. My early sleep cycles really are like 45-55 minutes, and later ones are.. not more than 70 I think. But they sure aren't always consistent either, aside from that example at the top of the page where I mentioned falling asleep, dreaming and waking up naturally in like 20 minutes or whatever, I can easily wake up after seeing the clock at 7:54AM at like 8:30AM.

 

Which is like.. Uhh... Very strange. Aside from naturally wanting to sleep for 9.5 or so hours (which would only befit a 25 hour day), I don't really have any issues with sleep at all. And I'm totally willing to attribute my sleeping too long/not getting tired to my sedentary life style; I'm sure if I had a job with manual labor in the middle of the day (not happening any time soon) it'd help me sleep for a more normal amount of time. I did go a couple weeks going to sleep at midnight and waking up at 7:30AM every single day very strictly last summer when I was working fair stands. So... the heck is up with our sleep cycles, independent of our schedule? It's possible briefly being a little too conscious of the time can cause us to wake up earlier than normal after falling back asleep, but I always considered that more of a skill than anything. Something I learned? to do on Christmas mornings as a child. Really it's just always happened automatically if I "needed to be awake soon" when falling asleep.

 

But it'd be interesting to hear "Yeah no, sleep cycles less than 70 minutes long are extremely uncommon" or something. Just, the results I found were all talking about sleep cycles being 90 minutes 90 minutes 90 minutes 90 minutes, which I GUARANTEE is not a thing. I've heard countless times in my lucid dreaming research that earlier sleep cycles are shorter than later ones, or at least that you're in REM for less (of the) time..? Now I'm doubting myself, like maybe they're 90 minutes from the start and REM just makes up a tiny/non-existent portion of the first few cycles, and slowly takes more of the 90 minute cycle as the night goes on, I don't know. But it sure doesn't match my experience.

[Guest]

It says babies have shorter sleep cycles and NREM sleep cycle is 70-90 min. Also naps are 30-60, so that last 45 min sleep in the morning could be a nap.

 

Some cycles could be as short as 50 min.