ERT

Recently, I've been trying to gain the ability to Lucid Dream. There are a couple main ways this can be done:

- The simple method is to do reality checks during the day. For example, read a paragraph from a page in a book, look away, and read it again. The text will be the same. Also, plug your nose and close your mouth and try to breathe. You won't be able to. Eventually, after getting used to these habits during the day, you'll perform one during your dream and it will fail. At this point you become aware that you are dreaming. So far this hasn't worked for me, since my bullshit-o-meter is fried beyond belief from years of insane dreams (in other words, when I do the reality check in the dream, and it fails, I don't see anything wrong with it because I accept that reality can change, and that I'm not dreaming, if that makes any sense).

- The hardest but most rewarding method is called WILD (Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming i believe). Basically, you have to go to sleep--get this--while remaining conscious. It sounds impossible, but last night I tried it. I was awake for half an hour trying unsuccessfully to simply fall asleep while remaining conscious. I realized that the way I was remaining aware was by thinking "oh, I'm in bed, I can feel my body." So I decided to just start counting. This way, I could forget all about being in bed, in a room, and focus on relaxing while still retaining a conscious link.

Lo and behold, thirty numbers into the counting, something strange happened. I sort of lost touch with my body, which seemed to float off elsewhere (I was completely aware of this happening, but I couldn't really will myself to move; early sleep paralysis). Instead of seeing the back of my eyes, I rather felt I was staring into some black room with my eyes open. All I could feel was my consciousness, and I didn't really have a body so to speak. It was the most bizarre thing ever. Around this time, I expected pictures and a dream to start forming, but I became aware of something else. Part of my body came back to my attention, my heart. My heart started racing (a common side effect of the WILD technique; this along with sleep paralysis makes it one hell of an experience), and I could literally feel my heart and the arteries going up to my head as they pulsed, but nothing else in my body. Then my eyes and nose started twitching like crazy and I eventually had to stop. When I came to seconds later I had a splitting headache, which I still have well into today. I'll have to try again when the headache goes away. It was definitely one of the weirdest things that's ever happened to me.

Anyway, what's supposed to happen is that you go through the steps of WILD, you retain awareness, and the dream world will unfold in front of you. This is hard to accomplish at night, since a lot of dreaming occurs during REM, and you haven't entered that state yet. A better time to do this is after waking up later in the night or from a nap. Going back to bed immediately after will increase your chances of WILD working. WILD Lucid Dreams are apparently incredibly realistic and quite easy to manipulate, and more rewarding than the easier method above.

Weird shit.