Archive Page 4
A few weeks ago, I posted an article about false awakenings. Today I'm going to offer some simple suggestions that can help you turn your false awakenings into lucid dreams. These techniques will also help you remember to perform frequent reality checks, which can greatly increase the likelihood of becoming lucid in a dream. (You can read more about reality checks here and here.)
To begin, think of the things you usually do when you first wake up. Which actions do you perform every morning upon awakening? For most people, this list will include turning off an alarm clock, getting out of bed, going to the bathroom, and other similar tasks. Those are the everyday activities that typically occur in a false awakening, so we're going to use them as the starting point for transitioning from a false awakening into a lucid dream, but because of the nature of these techniques, they'll also help you have lucid dreams even if you never have a false awakening.
Technique #1: Use your alarm clock as a trigger for a reality check. Whenever you glance at the clock, regardless of the time of day or night, ask yourself, "Am I dreaming?"
This technique is made even easier by the fact that you can use the numbers on a digital clock or the hands on a traditional clock to perform your reality check. In dreams, we often have trouble focusing on text and numbers for more than a few seconds at a time. The letters and numbers appear blurry, or they change rapidly, or they wiggle, or they morph into strange symbols, or they …Continue reading
If your dreams are starting to feel stale or unexciting, try taking a brief vacation to liven things up. Traveling can quickly stimulate your mind into producing more interesting and entertaining dreams.
Immersing yourself in a new environment or a different culture provides as much new material for your dreaming mind as it does for your waking self.
I just returned to Florida after a brief trip to Tennessee, and one thing I noticed while away on vacation was a surge in unusual dreams. I'd noticed the same thing while traveling overseas for a few weeks last year. The new surroundings provided plenty of fodder for my dreaming mind to make use of each night.
While Tennessee and Florida may not seem so different from each other — they're located within a day's driving distance in the same country, after all — there are definitely noticeable differences not only in landscape but in lifestyle. I live in the Tampa Bay area, which is hot, crowded, completely flat, and covered in condos, strip malls, and subdivisions full of houses that all look alike. I traveled to eastern Tennessee, which is mountainous, and the weather was cool and comfortable the entire time I was there. Since the point of the trip was to search for a large piece of land to build a house on, I also spent most of the trip visiting areas that were quiet, secluded, and sparsely populated.
Those details added up to a significant increase in new and unusual dream events. I won't bore you with stories of the individual dreams, but suffice it to say they were much more entertaining than my dreams from the previous few weeks.
So if you want to add a little spice to your dreams, take a few days off and hit the road. Visit someplace new, explore the location thoroughly, and enjoy the nightly results.
Those of you who have been following the Gamma mind enhancement experiment probably noticed the long delay between the end of the experiment and this post about the results from the final week of the experiment. The reason for the delay is because I wanted to observe whether or not the results lasted after I stopped using the CD, and, if so, how long after the end of the experiment they lasted.
Regarding whether or not the effects lasted beyond the end of the experiment, the answer to that question is yes and no. Some of the results lasted and others didn't. As I described in the report from Days 8 through 11 of the experiment, it's common for some effects to occur right away while others take time, and also common for some effects to occur only while using the technology and for other effects to last long after the final listening session is over.
Some of the effects occurred only while I was listening to the CD and faded within a few hours or less after the end of the listening session. For example, the tingling in the forehead, which I first described in the report from Day 1 of the experiment, occurred only during the 30-minute listening sessions and gradually faded away within a few hours after each session ended.
The pulsing sensation I described early in the experiment, which I observed during …Continue reading
A false awakening occurs when you're dreaming and believe you've woken up when in actuality you are still dreaming and only dreamed of waking up. You "wake up" and begin to go about your daily routine — visit the bathroom, brush your teeth, get dressed, etc. — until eventually you realize you're still dreaming.
At that point, you may slip into a completely new dream or you may wake up from the dream for real this time. Or, even more intriguingly, you may have another false awakening and believe you've woken up when instead you're still dreaming and once again only dreamed of waking up.
You can "wake up" from a dream only to discover you haven't really woken up at all and you're still dreaming, and then you can "wake up" from your first false awakening and think to yourself "This time I'm REALLY awake," only to find out you've had another false awakening and you're still dreaming, and then you can "wake up" again into another dream of awakening, and so forth.
This cycle of false awakenings can go on and on. In fact, it can go on so long you begin to constantly question whether or not you're awake, and you wonder how you can ever be one hundred percent certain you're not still dreaming. This is exactly the kind of persistent questioning of reality that rests at the heart of lucid dreaming.
Lucid dreaming offers so much more than entertainment. It can lead to an entirely new awareness and insight into the nature of reality. …Continue reading
It's no secret that what we eat affects our health, but how does it affect the mind? Can eating specific foods help you think more clearly, improve your ability to focus, or increase your creativity? By the same token, can avoiding certain foods have a similar effect? Can your diet also increase or decrease your odds of experiencing expanded states of consciousness or awareness?
Those are the questions I'll be exploring over the next few months as I transition from being a carnivore to being a vegetarian. During the first month, I'll eliminate only meat, fish and poultry. That will put me in the category of "lacto-ovo vegetarian" — a vegetarian who doesn't eat meat but still eats eggs and dairy products. During the second month, I'll also eliminate eggs and dairy products, which will put me in the vegan category.
My goal is to observe how the change in diet affects my mind, and to get answers to these questions, among others:
- Will I think more clearly or have an easier time focusing?
- Will I feel more creative or inspired?
- Will I notice any changes in dreaming or an increase in the frequency of lucid dreams?
- Will my awareness or sensitivity increase?
- Will I notice changes in my emotional state, in how I react or respond to various situations?
- Will my experiences during meditation and other consciousness-related practices be affected by the change in diet?
I'll stick to a vegan diet for a minimum of a few months. I believe it will take at least that long (probably longer) for my body to fully shed the toxins from my current meat-eating diet and adjust to the new neurochemical balance triggered by the vegan diet. If the positive results outweigh any negative results, I'll remain a vegan for the long-term. It's something I've often considered doing over the past few years, but until now I wasn't ready to make that change in my life.
There has been a recent resurgence in the use of psychoactive substances* to aid in achieving trance states or spiritual experiences, so I thought I'd write an article about why I made a personal decision not to use them in my own exploration of consciousness.
Though many of these substances have been used for centuries in various cultures around the world, I don't believe their use is needed in the study of expanded states of consciousness, particularly in modern times and with so many other options available. I'll even go as far as to say for many modern seekers the use of psychoactive substances is more of a hindrance than a help because they learn to rely on a drug to trigger altered states instead of learning how to achieve those states on their own.
With drug-free methods of practice — such as meditation, drumming, chanting, hypnosis, yoga, dance, and others — the practitioner can achieve an altered state, and may choose to fully embrace that state for the course of the event, but even in doing so and allowing herself to be carried away by that current, she always retains the option of being in 100% conscious control of her mental and emotional state. At any time, at any moment, she can consciously choose to end the experience.
Psychoactive substances restrict the user's freedom by limiting — and in some cases eliminating — his conscious control. Once the substance is ingested, injected or inhaled, it begins to act on the user's brain and body and there is no turning back. Until the effects …Continue reading
