zzzzz
Looking back on it, I think it was more a result of the perfect combination of sleepyness + the amount of time that I slept, rather than a result of my dream journal.
The whole purpose of the journal was to become better at recognizing dreams and maintaining luicidity (that a word?) without waking up, but so far not much has changed in this respect. However, I have noticed that my dreams have become alot more clear; sharper. I remember most of my dreams between the ages of 8-18 were usually very fuzzy, I could never read text on paper or on screens, and most peoples faces were blurry, I just knew who they are based on a feel or the way they spoke. Since I've started the journal this has very significantly changed, most of the time now when I have dreams I can see peoples faces in great detail, I can read computer screens and books, and I can even do things such as send text messages on my phone or do math equations on paper. Cooooool.
Anyway, about last night. So a while ago I posted about having a wake-initiated lucid dream experience (here's the wiki on it). Basically I went from being awake to being asleep and entering a dream without breaking consciousness. It's a pretty odd feeling, it feels a little bit like going numb all over or going under anesthesia if anybody's ever had that in the hospital (except you dont black out.) Last night I had another one of these, except this time I was trying as hard as possible to focus on what my body felt like as I fell asleep.
I fell into a really brief random dream, I cant even remember where it was. I did something a little bit too ridiculous for my brain, and usually what happens when I do that in a lucid dream is my brain decides to end the dream and pull me back to being awake. When I woke up from this dream, I didnt fully wake up, I could see and hear things around me but I couldnt move: i was experiencing sleep paralysis. I get this ALL the time, and every time i get it I freak out and jolt my body awake. I think its mainly scary becaues I can't actually feel myself breathing in sleep paralysis, so I just figure im not breathing at all.
THIS time, however, I tried something different. When I woke up into sleep paralysis, instead of rejecting it, I simply accepted it. I didnt make any effort whatsoever to move, and focused on my body and felt it grow increasingly numb. As this was happening, I realized I was going through the same process again with a wake-iniated lucid dream; I was falling back asleep again while still conscious. Realizing this, I quickly started imagining a setting, I imagined skydiving over the ocean. It was unbelievable. As I invisioned this, I felt the numbness rapidly accelerate, and the picture I had in my head materialized right in front of my eyes and I was dumped directly into a dream which exactly reflected what I was thinking. I was falling from the sky in an amazing lucid dream which, for the first time, I had created.
I got so excited that I woke back up again. But when I did i made sure to continue not to move my body at all, and embrace the sleep paralysis to allow myself to fall back asleep again. And it worked. Perfectly. Between 8-9PM I probably did this about 40 times, creating most of the settings consciously, floating in this incredibly weird void between sleeping and waking where I could experience very realistic and tangible dreams while still knowing that I was just laying on my bed. There was even a point once I had really gotten the hang of it (probably after the first 30 dreams or so) when I could be in a dream, physically open my eyes in real life and see my room, and close them again and be in the same exact place in the dream.
Interestingly, there seemed to be an arbitrary but constant ratio in my perception of time between real life and the dreams. Something along the lines of 1:4. What felt like 20 minutes in a dream turned out to only be 5 minutes in real life; what felt like an hour turned out to be 15 minutes. I could keep track of real time due to alarms I had periodically set to go off on the lowest volume setting on my phone, so I could still hear them from the dreams without having them wake me up. I couldn't figure out if there was any way to slow down time further in a dream, it was strangely consistent.
I don't know if I'll ever get to that state again, I think it was mainly just a combination of the right amount of sleepyness, the right time to take a nap, and the amount of time I napped for. The key, though, seemed to be accepting the paralysis instead of rejecting it. So if you ever happen to experience sleep paralysis, try not to freak out, try to embrace it and see what you can do with it.
The whole purpose of the journal was to become better at recognizing dreams and maintaining luicidity (that a word?) without waking up, but so far not much has changed in this respect. However, I have noticed that my dreams have become alot more clear; sharper. I remember most of my dreams between the ages of 8-18 were usually very fuzzy, I could never read text on paper or on screens, and most peoples faces were blurry, I just knew who they are based on a feel or the way they spoke. Since I've started the journal this has very significantly changed, most of the time now when I have dreams I can see peoples faces in great detail, I can read computer screens and books, and I can even do things such as send text messages on my phone or do math equations on paper. Cooooool.
Anyway, about last night. So a while ago I posted about having a wake-initiated lucid dream experience (here's the wiki on it). Basically I went from being awake to being asleep and entering a dream without breaking consciousness. It's a pretty odd feeling, it feels a little bit like going numb all over or going under anesthesia if anybody's ever had that in the hospital (except you dont black out.) Last night I had another one of these, except this time I was trying as hard as possible to focus on what my body felt like as I fell asleep.
I fell into a really brief random dream, I cant even remember where it was. I did something a little bit too ridiculous for my brain, and usually what happens when I do that in a lucid dream is my brain decides to end the dream and pull me back to being awake. When I woke up from this dream, I didnt fully wake up, I could see and hear things around me but I couldnt move: i was experiencing sleep paralysis. I get this ALL the time, and every time i get it I freak out and jolt my body awake. I think its mainly scary becaues I can't actually feel myself breathing in sleep paralysis, so I just figure im not breathing at all.
THIS time, however, I tried something different. When I woke up into sleep paralysis, instead of rejecting it, I simply accepted it. I didnt make any effort whatsoever to move, and focused on my body and felt it grow increasingly numb. As this was happening, I realized I was going through the same process again with a wake-iniated lucid dream; I was falling back asleep again while still conscious. Realizing this, I quickly started imagining a setting, I imagined skydiving over the ocean. It was unbelievable. As I invisioned this, I felt the numbness rapidly accelerate, and the picture I had in my head materialized right in front of my eyes and I was dumped directly into a dream which exactly reflected what I was thinking. I was falling from the sky in an amazing lucid dream which, for the first time, I had created.
I got so excited that I woke back up again. But when I did i made sure to continue not to move my body at all, and embrace the sleep paralysis to allow myself to fall back asleep again. And it worked. Perfectly. Between 8-9PM I probably did this about 40 times, creating most of the settings consciously, floating in this incredibly weird void between sleeping and waking where I could experience very realistic and tangible dreams while still knowing that I was just laying on my bed. There was even a point once I had really gotten the hang of it (probably after the first 30 dreams or so) when I could be in a dream, physically open my eyes in real life and see my room, and close them again and be in the same exact place in the dream.
Interestingly, there seemed to be an arbitrary but constant ratio in my perception of time between real life and the dreams. Something along the lines of 1:4. What felt like 20 minutes in a dream turned out to only be 5 minutes in real life; what felt like an hour turned out to be 15 minutes. I could keep track of real time due to alarms I had periodically set to go off on the lowest volume setting on my phone, so I could still hear them from the dreams without having them wake me up. I couldn't figure out if there was any way to slow down time further in a dream, it was strangely consistent.
I don't know if I'll ever get to that state again, I think it was mainly just a combination of the right amount of sleepyness, the right time to take a nap, and the amount of time I napped for. The key, though, seemed to be accepting the paralysis instead of rejecting it. So if you ever happen to experience sleep paralysis, try not to freak out, try to embrace it and see what you can do with it.