From:
david.j.worrell@gmail.com
You know Slider, maybe I've been approaching this whole thing wrong.
I keep defending against all your assertions, as you keep insisting
that everyone must learn to do lucid dreaming the same way YOU do.
But suppose I was to turn the tables and start insisting that you
must do dreaming the way I did? :)
Let's even assume for argument's sake that you're right about it
being easier to go lucid and stay lucid using WILD (maybe it is
for many). Well, then perhaps it should be considered an even more
difficult achievement to succeed at that same task using DILD.
Right? I mean, if it's harder to maintain full awareness
consistently in DILD (as you claim), that would only mean that to
succeed at DILD tasks would require even more skill.
More discipline. More sobriety. Yes?
Great. So here is the exercise you must successfully perform,
and it can't be done using WILD, you must do this in DILD:
"I am going to teach you right here the first step to power... :)
"I am going to teach you how to set up dreaming."
"You must start by doing something very simple...
"Tonight in your dreams you must look at your hands."
"Focus your eyes on them just like this."
(bends head forward, and stares at hands with mouth open)
"You can, of course, look at whatever you please: your toes,
or your belly, or your pecker, for that matter. I said your hands
because that was the easiest thing for me to look at."
Clarification:
Yeah, it's funny and all, but I say do not bend forward.
Instead raise your hands up so your eyes remain at the level you
were already using to view the dream scene. And no bs of looking
at your dick or your toes or anything else, because that requires
disengaging your gaze from the dream scene, and then having to look
back up again. Do everything the old man says with no deviation.
Just like I did.
"I said your hands because they'll always be there.
When they begin to change shape, you must move your sight away
from them and pick something else; and then look at your hands again."
Clarification:
You don't have to stare at your hands until they begin to
'change shape' if you don't want to. It suffices to stare at them
long enough to assure yourself that you're still fully lucid and
sober and can still clearly see your hands. You also need to remember
what you were looking at before you looked at your hands each time,
because when you look away again, each time you will look at
different objects in the dream scene than you were looking at before.
I am not going to include all of Castaneda's accounts of his
attempts, because I can tell they are to some extent bullshit
(if you care to know how I can tell that, I could explain it,
but CC himself later confessed to us that he was actually unable
to successfully perform this exercise as instructed). He eventually
had to use other methods to learn dreaming - at least, that's what
he later claimed. I'll comment on only a part of CC's remarks:
CC:
"I had no volition whatsoever over when I would give myself the
command to look at my hands, or to look at other items of the dreams.
It would just happen. At a given moment I would remember that I
had to look at my hands and then at the surroundings."
Clarification:
That part is misleading. To succeed, you have to go lucid FIRST,
and THEN consciously command yourself to raise up your hands and
look at them. If you merely have a dream of looking at your hands,
you're not really doing the exercise. To rewrite CC's comment
in the way it would need to be written by someone who succeeded:
Jeremy's rewrite:
I didn't know when I would suddenly realize I was dreaming,
but the moment after going lucid in a dream, I would intentionally
raise up my hands and stare at them for several seconds, before
turning my gaze to the dream scene and the specific items in it.
These are the main instructions to follow exactly:
"I'm going to remind you of all the dreaming techniques you must
practice...
First, you must focus your gaze on your hands as the starting point.
Then shift your gaze to other items, and look at them in brief glances.
Focus your gaze on as many things as you can. Remember that if you
only glance briefly, the images do not shift. Then go back to your hands.
Every time you look at your hands you renew the power needed for
dreaming, so in the beginning don't look at too many things.
Four items will suffice every time. Later on, you may enlarge the
scope until you can cover all you want, but as soon as the images
begin to shift and you feel you are losing control, go back to
your hands."
That's it. Repeat that sequence as often as you can before waking up
in each of the 10 sessions of dreaming.
And it's not good enough just to find your hands, you have
to do this entire procedure verbatim as it is written above.
Each time you look at your hands, look back toward the dream scene
in a different direction, and choose at least 3 or 4 different
dream scene items to carefully observe.
Now, using DILD alone, do that exact exercise 10 times
on 10 different days.
Good luck!
I don't know for sure where Carlos got this damned method.
The earliest mention I've found of it seems to indicate it originally
came from Gurdjieff. I'll even confess that I was shocked as hell
when this method actually worked. I was completely amazed. It is
what hooked me into the entire long road...
Notice that the above method not only *requires* remaining
continually lucid, it also requires employing significant
discipline within the shifting dream scenes, which naturally
being DILD may indeed be somewhat... unstable. It doesn't
matter what the dreaming scenes are, or what they may morph into.
Whatever the dreaming scenes do, you must simply keep performing
the same exercise over and over.
This lays down a distinct structure for sober behavior in lucid dreaming.
Slider, I've only asked that you complete this 10 times on
10 different days. I myself successfully performed the exercise
more than 10 times in my first year of dreaming alone (1985-86),
and had many other dreaming adventures besides, including learning
to intentionally fly and having what seemed to be several OOBEs
(but of course, really were not). And that was merely the bare
beginnings of my dreaming adventures over 30 years ago.
It's also interesting to note that at first I told no one else
in the world I was doing this. There were no internet discussions,
no Cleargreen, and not a single other person I knew had ever
mentioned attempting such a thing. I had not yet even heard what
"lucid dreaming" was. I had nothing to go on but these... books.
So... do you think you can do that, big shot?
Come on, it's only the first step to power. :)
Well, after succeeding at that 10 times, then, if you still want to,
you can come back and tell me about how much greater your lucidity
supposedly is when using WILD to initiate dreaming.
But until you can succeed at this task, maybe you shouldn't say
another word to me about how superior your method supposedly is.
You criticize me for finding it difficult to do your dreaming method.
Let's see if you can do mine.
***
Epilogue:
Of course, there's a snowball's chance in hell of you doing this.
It would probably be just as hard for you to use this method as
it would be for me to do WILD 10 times. It may well be almost
impossible for you if you do even try at all, simply because it
wasn't your own way of learning to do dreaming.
You may be comforted to know that Carlos himself largely
abandoned this dreaming technique, as he did so many of his
early practices. In The Art Of Dreaming, as the initial dreaming
exercise, in the first step at 'the first Gate' he replaces
this initial exercise with a method that's more like WILD. :)
Did you know that?
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)