Lucid dreaming techniques?

Em hotep.

I am opening this thread to discuss different methods of lucid dreaming and inner projection itself in general. Most of my lucid dreams happen during the waking hours, in the last phases of sleep. I wake up and notice that my body feels light and numb. That's when I move with my dream body and usually try to roll out of bed. When I notice color behind my closed eyes, I focus on it and I become fully immersed in the dream state. I then use my intention to 'command' the dream to become more vivid. The amount of information I find in a lucid dream depends on how vivid the dream itself is. Some dreams are not very vivid and the information comes from the surface of the subconscious. While in other dreams, the dream is more vivid than waking life and extremely detailed. In those vivid dreams, I usually search for information about people I know or about something else. I do this by opening a computer and using a 'magic search' app or I write the name of the person of my interest on a piece of paper, then fold it in my fist and upon unfolding, the information is revealed. Sometimes I use an image-based search and discover images related to the person that I have never seen before (at least consciously). Lucid dreaming can be useful to face terrifying nightmares and to practice your skills but when you look for information that exists deep in your unconscious mind, the vividness of the dream plays a huge role. I have more than 50 lucid dream experiences but I have not succeeded having a lucid dream for more than 2 hours except once. This was the most vivid lucid dream of my life, in which I saw energy and thoughts taking form in front of me. This is very useful for experiencing memories of the past with full detail and reading books with clarity. Sleep cycles are important for lucid dreaming because lucid dreaming happens only during REM cycles. One morning upon waking, I chose to enter a lucid dream and sleep again. When I did, I tried to increase the vividness using intention but it didn't work. After a few minutes I felt the dream collapse and I woke up. I wondered what pushed me out of the dream and didn't allow me to dive deeper. I came to the conclusion that it was the last phases of sleep and I had slept more than enough. Another morning the same thing happened, except I woke up and fell asleep 5 times in one hour and entered a lucid dream 5 times in a row! I wanted to stay longer but the dream itself pushed me to wake up.

What's your experience with lucid dreaming? What techniques do you use? Do you know of any way to make the dream last longer?

Em Hotep.

I have had one recent lucid dreaming experience, where I took control of the dream after going on full beastlike berserker attack on some darker entities within my dream, unleashing full ferocity of the beast inside me at these demon like figures. This was after the practice of certain integral dream yogic disciplines (read the book "Dream Yoga: Become Conscious in the World of Dreams" by Samel Aun Weor). For instance one would often remind and ask oneself during the day whether one was awake or not and make a tilt to the side so as to see whether you were in the astral world where you would be floating or in the physical realm where nothing of that would happen so as to program your mind subconsciously for it to occur in your dreams in order to wake up to lucidity and pierce into the astral realm which nearly occured for me but I woke up at that instant when the veil was being lifted...

Sounds interesting. I will certainly look it up because I haven't found a good book on lucid dreaming (most of them say the same things in a different manner and explain the same techniques). I have only read a book called: A field guide on lucid dreaming: Mastering the art of oneironautics. It didn't teach much but it gave me some good ideas to try in a dream...

nachtzehren wrote:Lucid dreaming was one of those 'wait, this is a thing people can't do?' realisations for me., particularly in relation to the control elements. I have dreams that are within my control far more often than I do those that are not.

This. I don't have a technique for it though, just happens.
Lucid dreaming is when you're aware that you're dreaming.. it's not always controlling the dream too.. but both happen, the former more than the latter

I am not sure if this is lucid dreaming, I thought it was more Astral Travel because I was studing it at the time. But when I was knee deep in hermetics, alchecmy and chaos magick, something similar happened quite a few times, or atleast something hard to explain. I would meditate with an candle with appropriate colors, and smoke an appropriate herb, etc,... I could meditate good back then (this was ten years ago) until everything turned black and things started shifting on me, my equilibrium and my surroundings, I could physically feel it. (I've only talked to a few people about this so if this has nothing to do with astral travel or lucid dreaming please correct me) but I would look around me and realize I was in different surroundings, always a dark bedroom and I was always just standing there watching a man sleep alone in his bed... most of the time I did not know them, one time in particular I the man resembled someone I knew.... but I could look around and see their bedroom....it happened about 4 times, and then it just slowly ended, probably when my concentration broke. anyhow that's my experience.

LKSW09 wrote:I am not sure if this is lucid dreaming, I thought it was more Astral Travel because I was studing it at the time. But when I was knee deep in hermetics, alchecmy and chaos magick, something similar happened quite a few times, or atleast something hard to explain. I would meditate with an candle with appropriate colors, and smoke an appropriate herb, etc,... I could meditate good back then (this was ten years ago) until everything turned black and things started shifting on me, my equilibrium and my surroundings, I could physically feel it. (I've only talked to a few people about this so if this has nothing to do with astral travel or lucid dreaming please correct me) but I would look around me and realize I was in different surroundings, always a dark bedroom and I was always just standing there watching a man sleep alone in his bed... most of the time I did not know them, one time in particular I the man resembled someone I knew.... but I could look around and see their bedroom....it happened about 4 times, and then it just slowly ended, probably when my concentration broke. anyhow that's my experience.

That's interesting. You mentioned this happened while you were awake and this tells me that it wasn't lucid dreaming but I think I know what it might be. Both lucid dreaming and inner projection happen in the inner plane but the difference is whether your body is asleep or not. Inner projection can occur consciously while awake and with a degree of mastery, a person can do the same things there as with lucid dreaming (because both happen in the same plane). In the past I used techniques to astraly project but I later discovered I was projecting in my inner realm and not the actual astral plane, which exists above it. If this was the case for you as well, you can find out by examining the symbolism in your experiences and discover what it meant for you. It could be trying to teach you something about yourself.