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Im sure nearly everybody heres experimented with lucid dreams at one point or another. What abilities have you all mastered when dreaming??
I can do just about anything I can imagine within my lucid dreams. I use LCDs to travel space and time. Or satisfy my wildest fantacies. My dreams help me recall or review knowledge and information. I also use them as staging grounds for astral travel. I never successfully died though, within the dreams I mean; hence just about anything.
The way I'd suggestion going about producing a dream scape is to build it one dimention at a time. Sketch your dream world out. Then visualize the details while awake. Once your drawing is complete meditate on the final product and while doing this visualize your world. Once confident you can remember it all then start building it from within your dreams. Its an on going process and its never complete. And you're not really creating a new world, but rather making an image of the dream world you already have.
As far as generating my own dream scape well thats sorta complicated. Basically it starts around a main temple. First I started with pencil and paper, while completely awake. I created a layout for my dream world. The way I think of it is like in the original hobbit, TR Tolkien left a map in his books that depicted where all the lands and various land marks were where. Each place has its own scene and each land has its own tales to tell. So I created my own personalized map set up to my needs. Drew the outline, the various different islands and land masses, then picked where I wanted my central temple to be. My dream world is actually composed of a system of temples. Each temple acts as a node for dreaming and protection. My temples generate an energy sheild that extends to fortress walls at the ends of my dream scape.
While drawing I am actually visualizing each area of my world and trying to find a fitting place for all the different things and the various stories of my life. I actually worked from the outside in. I drew the various continents and islands and then I drew a wall that surrounds the entire land. Beyond this wall I imagined endless oceans in all directions. The fortress, coupled with the energy field, are a protective measure both to help focus and tune in on my own dreams and psychic energies but to prevent unwanted outside sources from interferring or invading. Each land is actually sort of like a world of its own. They also act as a portal into my mind. So I can use my dream scape not only as a retreat but platform for specific dreams. The basic concepts I use are - scenery, temples, protections and portals. The scenery composed my world. The temples focus in on and act as hubs of specific aspects of my psyche. As much as they are door ways into my mind they are also libraries of knowledge, stuff I've learned, experienced or never knew I already knew. The protections help keep me safe from outside harm. And the portals allow me to tailor pick my dreams beyond my dream scape.
Once I had it all on paper I then took it to the next level and meditated on all of this. While doing this I replayed the imagry I created while drawing and then started to visualize what the world looks like. Once I was confident I knew what I wanted I then took the construction to the third level, my dreams. In order to really be successfull at this one needs to at least be able to influence their dreams through dream incubation. This is the practice of setting objects that represent specific dreams one would like to have near their bed prior to sleep. Doing this sort of creates a sort of ritual. Each object has its meaning and relation to the intended dream and by setting them near the bed before sleep one leaves an imprint for their sub-consciousness.
However if you can do lucid dreaming comfortably and are able to sustain it for a period of time then thats the way to go, its much more direct. Once at this phase I started with my main temple. This place acts as a staging ground for all my self-induced lucid dreams. It acts as a nexus into my mind. Its the seat of my consciousness. This place enables me to travel to all the other lands via portals located in it. The temple also acts as a sort of looking glass from which I can run diagnostics and work on problem areas. Really it boils down to memorization. I still never see the exact same thing twice in any dream. But I have the major componets memorized - I know what the temple looks like and its dimentions. Once I was confident I could remember my temple I then began generating the various lands, land marks, icons and sub-temples, all the way until I finished at my walls and all I could see were endless oceans and I was satisfied I created the main world of my dream world. The various portals allow me to access other alternate realms and dreams. The dream scape is meant to not be set in stone. Thus I have no specific time of day or night or even season that I start out in. When I enter this place the color of the sky, time of day etc all are random. Sometimes even mixed. There is no end to it and if there was I'd get bored and destroy it.
The hardest part is maintaining a world of such vastness. And again its all about memorization and I highly value the use of mnuemonics and visual aids ,especially my dream journal. All I need to do is contemplate my original design or skim over my journal and I can visualize the various things within it as well as conjure memories.
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Another thing I cant do is have sex with women. Rarely do I ever spot a nice looking woman in a lucid dream but when I do I hardly even get around to taking my pants off and the dream fades away.
Lucid dreams are and altered state of mind not unlike meditation. It requires much practice and focus to maintain one's awareness in their dreams, obviously. However sex stimulates the mind in a way that is counter productive to the process of staying focused on the dream itself - the mind becomes more focused on sexual gratification. You can learn to have sex in your dreams. But its not the thing to try if you're a beginner still. You'd want to get good at maintaining your focus and control over your dreams while doing simple things and I mean start with the simplist things - like rubbing your hands together or blinking, walking of just general movement. Its like being a baby all over again. Once your motor skills are good then you can learn to talk, read and write. Now you can work on learning more advanced stuff like sex.
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Unfortunately I still only have random lucid dreams about once a week so dont have that much time to practice. Im gonna try and keep disciplined enough to look at my hands 20 times a day for a month. I keep doing it for about a week then give up.
I preffer the" Wake, go Back to Bed" technique. Its pretty simple. Set an alarm of some sort, even drink a glass of water, before bed. I'd set it to give you 6-7 hours of sleep, long enough to complete your REM cycle. When your alarm goes off don't get up (unless you need to releave yourself). Instead turn it off and go back to sleep. While going back to sleep attempt to recall your dream. The idea is that you still have enough melatonine in your body to quickly fall asleep. The trick is maintain awareness and this can be done by looking for signs that you are dreaming. There are actually a bunch of ways to go about this. Wikipedia has some you can check out here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dreaming
Your Dreamscape Abilities
Jan 10 2007, 11:23 AM
