A Complete, Free Program for Lucid Dream Induction
Let's break this down into its basic components. Success at lucid dream induction requires:
What is reality? This is the big question. It is inseparable from "what is consciousness" because the only evidence that anything exists at all is because we can "experience" things. Apparently, there is a Universe we are embedded in, and there are "models" of this Universe which we construct - both consciously and unconsciously. These models, or interpretations, of what is going on help us to perceive our environment and to make judgments and decisions as how to act so that we may survive in our environment.
The models - what we sense and experience - are not the actual world around us. If you think about what consciousness is, you can realize that it takes some time for sounds and light-waves and sensory impressions from the outside world to travel along your nervous system, get processed in your brain, and then become experienced as the corresponding sounds and visuals and feelings that we all know. If this lag between what is happening "out there" and what you experience and decide to do about it were too long, we would not last very long in a sometimes hostile Universe. Therefor, the mind - and consciousness - is predictive. You are not seeing what happened a moment ago, not exactly. The models we experience are predictions of what we expect to occur a moment or longer AFTER the actual event occurred in the "real" world. When the brain has to make a decision, it has to coordinate information it just received with an action it will command the muscles or glands to perform that will affect the environment some time after the initial event that triggered this whole cascade occurred. Sounds complicated, but even simple nervous systems - like those in slugs or flies and even in plants - can perform these processes amazingly well. What does this have to do with lucid dreaming you ask? Well, when we are dreaming we are still experiencing models, except the information forming the bulk of these models of reality is not being triggered by things occurring in the external environment (this is not always true, but we are speaking generally). Where and why do we experience these models? The answer for almost any biological event can be reduced to this answer: for survival! Dreaming was adapted for as a practice mechanism. Similar to how children play or pretend as a means to rehearse the activities which will be important during adulthood, dreaming is a virtual space for rehearsing certain survival actions. What is interesting about this is that the themes and events that all people dream about as children indicate that we are born with particular schemas that are not dependent on waking learning. Schemas are mental structures - thought windows which shape and frame how we see things. Schemas allow us to recognize things, informing how we will categorize an object or event, and underlie our expectations, stereotypes, and our very perceptions. All children dream of being chased and of falling. Likewise, as adults, stress triggers a relatively limited number of dream themes, and although some "day residue" does comprise the makeup of our dreams, there are schematic structures to dreaming which exist within our dream-generation-system independent of our life experiences. |
Dreaming evolved as a sort of virtual reality simulator in which you could practice dealing with predicaments that, if occurring while awake, would threaten your life or your resources (or even threaten the people in your life whom you rely on for important things). Just like waking consciousness is a survival tool for complex nervous systems and yet is capable of just enjoying a sunset, dreaming does not have to always be experienced as a rehearsal of threatening situations. But it is very useful to have the basic understanding of what dreaming evolved for. When we understand that dreaming evolved primarily as a threat-simulation system, these following points become better understood:
Here is a three-step process for hacking the dream-generation-system and realizing that you are dreaming without triggering an immediate waking-up... |
Activate Dense REM
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Recognize Your Dreams
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Know What to do Once Lucid
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