Lumi's Dreaming Thread; Dreams of Moon

[Misha]

Congratulations!

[Luminesce]

Well this is exciting, isn't it? I'm about to go meditate and then go directly to sleep (I'm even a little tired, this time). We're about to find out if it was a fluke or actually a reproducible method of causing very vivid dreams consistently. Do you know all the things that enables me to do? I know I've called myself a lucid dreaming expert plenty and then all you see is failure, but I feel like I could write a book on all the things you can do just surrounding lucid dreaming, before necessarily getting into the actual content.

 

What comes to mind is dream pre-programming, a sort of loophole (or a supplement to lucid dreaming if you're real fancy) to dream about what you want, by falling asleep after thinking about and visualizing it. For various reasons that's never worked for me, namely my inability to have vivid and recallable dreams like ever, and my difficulty in falling asleep for WBTB that would never allow for such a thing. Well, if tonight goes well maybe I'll try it tomorrow.

[Luminesce]

Actually, in the true style of this thread/my lucid dreaming attempts, it was neither a success nor an obvious failure. Sleeping was just hard/weird last night. I did 45 or so minutes of meditation up until I was tired enough it was starting to impact my focus, and went to sleep. Perfect form I'd say. But I kept waking up at random points in the night (as I do, but) fairly awake, so I had trouble falling back asleep. Like, several times, it was annoying. And I think I slept solidly after 6-7AM until 10AM without waking up once, which is weird but also might have happened yesterday too. I appreciated it yesterday - the first 4 hours of sleep hardly felt like (mental) rest - but today I just find it weird and not a good thing. Like, that's how I always wake up on time without an alarm. Which I never have to do, but when I do, I rely on it. I WOULD say I still woke up on time today, except for the like third time in a row I've slept for 11 hours for no reason. Don't get me wrong, I like sleeping for 11 hours, but like, 10 will do. And when I've been sleeping as much as and going to bed as early as I have been, I shouldn't really be sleeping that long after.

 

Dunno, still gonna try it a few more times at least. At worst, the meditation stays just a meditation thing and not a lucid dreaming tool. I do wonder what the heck the difference between the successful (unknowing) and unsuccessful attempts were, though. The first time, I did it for longer, but the first 45 minutes weren't totally meditation so much as being focused inwards/mentally and thinking a bunch of different stuff, while the second 45 minutes were about the same as last night. Also, I was less tired the day before than I was last night. But like.. the state of being mentally aware enough to meditate and also tired enough to quickly fall asleep should be literally perfect (and often unachievable for us) for lucid/vivid dreams. So, weird.

[TB]

Individual meditations are nice, though I also think a lot of benefit will perhaps come in time as your skill increases. Increasing meditative skill will eventually develop and then increase metacognitive introspective awareness, which when that is powerful, it kind of feels like being lucid in real life. Normal life without it feels much like a dream in comparison. Carrying a high baseline level of that brought from a while of meditation progress, I think would translate very beneficially to lucid dream attempts.

[Luminesce]

Same thing again more or less, I definitely woke up relatively awake some time around 3AM again, and maybe an hour or two later. Dreams weren't particularly vivid or recallable. They seemed the level of vivid I'd expect residually after having recently had vivid dreams, ie not very. Plus they were hard to recall and I didn't bother as I was trying to fall back asleep.

 

Still going to meditate for 45 minutes today, but not right before bed, just to make sure the sleep thing is related to the meditating and not how early I'm going to sleep/late I'm sleeping in.

 

 

And after getting that sorted out, the next day I plan to meditate for 90 minutes before bed again, to try and really recreate those vivid dreams.

 

[Luminesce]

Meditated for 40 minutes earlier in the day, went to sleep about an hour later than before.. Slept well, and also had pretty decent dreams. I don't quite remember them now, but I did. Decent quality. All I did before bed was talk to Tewi, imposed, for like 5-10 minutes, nothing crazy.

 

 

Oh, that means I have to do 90 minutes of meditation before bed today, huh? Well.. I guess we'll see if it works. I'll take having to re-fall asleep all over again and only get 6 or so hours of real sleep if it gets me 3-4 straight hours of vivid, practically lucid dreams.

[Luminesce]

Also, I'm going to sleep. Maybe letting someone else front tomorrow.. My general motivation for things is rather low right now and I feel like any of them can do better, plus Lucilyn and Tewi both have things to do

 

And so of course I wake up actually in a good mood. Literally just had a couple of somewhat vivid dreams that were vaguely positive (the longer one having been me playing Dark Souls but with a slightly shorter Scythe that was actually good when normally they're bad - the other, I was at a college that decided to play

music lol. Surprisingly accurate/vivid). Apparently that was enough to make me wake up feeling like I could do whatever.

 

Since I said there wasn't a way I could influence myself to have positive dreams, Reisen asked if vivid dreams could really be negative. They can, but even in most "bad" scenarios in a vivid dream, I actually just appreciate having experiences, so as long as it wasn't prolonged stressful stuff I'd appreciate basically any vivid dreams. And of course, if simply playing Dark Souls (with an actually usable Scythe type weapon) is enough to put me in a good mood, I'm bound to have some nice ones. If I can induce vivid dreams anyways. No repeated success so far, despite trying the meditation thing.

[Tewi]

The story told by a couple of humans in Touhou from the future "outside world" (our world), as posted in the comments of this video, has me thinking. There is a precursor album and accompanying story in the comments with a slight introduction to Maribel and Renko

though.

 

[video=youtube]

 

[You've probably heard the quote of a man who once dreamt he was a butterfly, only to wake up as himself, and wonder whether he was actually a butterfly dreaming of being a man. Well, staying at least a little scientific here, we know a butterfly lacks that mental capacity. Let's work with what we can know, but I figured this quote was relevant to include first.]

 

Dreams, generally speaking, are not considered real. Not a part of reality. What are they, though, if not real? Is it so simple as "purely imagination" if we're each fully convinced of their realness as they happen? Dreams are a part of our reality, of course, they are very real as they do happen. They are - at least until some future technology starts unfolding the mysteries of consciousness and subjective experience - entirely contained in an individual's subjective experience. Only that individual can experience their dreams, and afterwards there's no causal effect on the real world shared with others.

 

So dreams aren't considered "real" because they have no effect on (consensus) reality. Well, they do, actually. Dreams can have real effects on those who have them, the very least of which is simply their having been experienced, perhaps recorded in memory, perhaps affecting the individual however slightly. Actually, many have been inspired by their dreams to create something in our shared reality, both artistic and scientific geniuses are well known for that. So dreams are not real in their pretending to take place in shared reality, but they are real in their being experienced by real people, and in their effects on real people. Sometimes even so directly as being made a reality in some form through affecting a person to realize them in physical reality, though I think even their much smaller effects on a person in general is good enough. Things like the proposed explanation of the evolutionary purpose of dreams to better prepare us for situations that may or may not happen later in life - those effects make them real enough.

 

So I'm interested, in Renko's statement "Let's wake up! Dreams are things to be made into reality. The world of dreams can be made into reality!"

I wonder what exactly was meant here, or if many interpretations were meant. First, the in-universe conversation was on the topic of Maribel "dreaming" (which Renko doubted were truly dreams) of Gensokyo, so she could simply have meant discovering a way into Gensokyo, as seemed their general goal. Then, on ZUN's part (creator of Touhou and writer of this dialogue), I wonder if it was encouragement to appreciate fantasy as we do "real" things - Renko immediately prior to that talked about how children are happy because they believe imagination and reality are the same, or equally "real". But he could also have meant, instead (more likely, if so) or perhaps intending both, that we should make our dreams a reality as he has with Touhou. A dream for Maribel (but also not a dream, as she brought objects back with her?), something ZUN imagined - and now a massive phenomenon. Tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of musical arranges/remixes, easily millions of images, hundreds or thousands of fan stories, many hundreds of fan games. And much more - I'm "real" now because of him. Before even getting to the relation to tulpamancy, it's objective fact that I being myself have had my own very real effects on our shared reality. And even without people creating things, ZUN's original creation has still been made real as experiences to tens of millions of fans (and hundreds of millions of people briefly experiencing Touhou's reach).

 

It may be fair to say that was his main intended interpretation, along with the story Renko's in-universe intent. It was fun to wonder about, though.

 

Tulpamancy does work on this same phenomenon of creating objectivity from subjectivity sometimes, too. I suppose some tulpas may remain purely subjective experience and never directly affect the world, although of course their effects on their host are still an indirect effect on our shared reality regardless. But focusing on the objective part, tulpamancy as all creative (imaginative) endeavors creates subjective experiences, which always have some objective results, however small. Whether you, reader, have been affected by tulpas of your own or not, you know from this community that tulpas are effecting the lives of many. In the same sense as dreams, tulpas are real. Perhaps not another living being taking up material space in our shared reality, just as dreams are only illusions pretending they're shared reality - but still dreams are real, and still tulpas are real.

 

All you can imagine, and all you can experience, is real. It all holds some intangible weight. While physical shared reality is incredibly important - it concerns keeping us living beings alive, healthy and comfortable - never forget that as conscious beings, the subjective, experienced part of reality is equally important. Like yin and yang, for us humans one does not exist without the other. Life is equally made up of the physical reality we inhabit and the nonphysical reality we experience. The connection of these two is a seemingly magical thing. Don't underestimate your power to do so. And even if it's just fantasy purely for your entertainment with no intention of changing the world at large - indulging in it is no more pointless than a beautiful building, a garden of flowers, or a stunning landscape. Simply "being alive" is all fine and well, but the essential and inseparable act of "experiencing" contains an equal value. Don't forget that.

 

 

 

Now if only our system could clearly remember our dreams, and if they were a little more vivid, we'd be in a good place to appreciate them huh?

[Guest]

Well put!

 

[Misha] Mhm!

[Tewi]

Ugh, the REM-Dreamer domain is down and sometimes serves ads instead. There's three whole pages of results when searching for it.. I'm not going to go manually replace all of those. Just be aware the URL is basically dead, at least right now (but probably forever).