.jpg "TEAM: Probot")
15 + 5 points
What Is Real? by Darkaardvark
May 18th, 2007 3:44 PM
I haven't figured out a cool way to document this, but since it's 15 points, I feel I've done more than enough.
My reality checks consist of looking down at my left hand (I'm left-handed) palm down, and counting the fingers- my middle finger always splits into two fingers in my dreams, so I have 6. 5 and I'm awake. If that somehow leaves me with inconclusive evidence, I (discreetly) plug my nose and attempt to inhale.
I've been doing this as a fairly regular thing (5-10 time a day, probably) for oh... several weeks at this point. At one point, it was my goal to do a reality check every time I went through a door. This proved to be unreasonably often- every time in and out of a bathroom, every night and every morning, and so-forth. Good idea in concept, but it was way too difficult. Now I just do them every time I hear the word dream, dreaming, or lucid, any time I think to do them, or any time event seem strange.
This has caused me to pay somewhat closer attention to the strangeness that is everyday life. I'm a very non-superstitious person, every time anything inexplicable happens the first thing I try to do is to come up with a rational explanation. Unfortunately, my unconscious mind is apparently very good at coming up with plausible-sounding (to my dream-self) explanations, so it kills my shots at a lucid-awakening during a dream. Thus, it is necessary to question odd events before trying to explain them away.
And to fully deserve my 15 points, here's what I have so far on my Lucid Dreaming task completion, which I have utterly failed to achieve to this point. It's probably going to insanely long by the time I'm done with it, so I might as well put part of it here. My struggles to date (minus an incident that I will include in the actual task completion because it's cool):
4/20: The plan tonight is to wake up at 4:00 A.M., *somehow* manage to force myself to stay awake and (semi-)alert for about a half-hour, and then attempt a lucid dream. I've had success with this method in the past but I've yet to have a lucid dream that I was really aware in, nor have I been able to have control over the dreams. Need to remember to FORCE myself to wake up when I find my grip on reality slipping. Short lucid dream > dream I don't remember at all.
If all goes really well, I'll attempt to pull off some sort of a task. I definitely want to do something that's out of my group or level range. "Confuse a plant" might be fun.
4/20 (later): Been pondering the time-frame thing. Supposedly, REM cycles are every three hours, so I'd be better off at 5-6 A.M., but that might be too late? Well, I'll try again tomorrow if it doesn't work tonight.
4/21: Utter, abject failure. I had set two alarms, one softer alarm playing music to wake me up before the loud one- but due to DST wackiness, the soft one was off by an hour, and I just shut off the loud one. So I ended up waking up at 5:15. Oh well, I said, that works too, right? So I forced myself to read (Stranger in a Strange Land) for about 15 minutes. I started to feel fairly awake, so I went back to bed and tried to drift into a dream. No luck- I was too awake, and wouldn't fall asleep with my mind awake. After a while I just rolled over and went to sleep. I can't even recall any dreams from last night, which is really disappointing.
5/3: Did I ever mention how pathetic it is that I'm trying to pull off my OWN task and I can't even do it? I'm lame. *sigh* I'll have a couple of chances to try again over the weekend. Must not get too down-trodden. Sadly, that's the worst possible thing I could do. It's all in the mind! Think positive!
My reality checks consist of looking down at my left hand (I'm left-handed) palm down, and counting the fingers- my middle finger always splits into two fingers in my dreams, so I have 6. 5 and I'm awake. If that somehow leaves me with inconclusive evidence, I (discreetly) plug my nose and attempt to inhale.
I've been doing this as a fairly regular thing (5-10 time a day, probably) for oh... several weeks at this point. At one point, it was my goal to do a reality check every time I went through a door. This proved to be unreasonably often- every time in and out of a bathroom, every night and every morning, and so-forth. Good idea in concept, but it was way too difficult. Now I just do them every time I hear the word dream, dreaming, or lucid, any time I think to do them, or any time event seem strange.
This has caused me to pay somewhat closer attention to the strangeness that is everyday life. I'm a very non-superstitious person, every time anything inexplicable happens the first thing I try to do is to come up with a rational explanation. Unfortunately, my unconscious mind is apparently very good at coming up with plausible-sounding (to my dream-self) explanations, so it kills my shots at a lucid-awakening during a dream. Thus, it is necessary to question odd events before trying to explain them away.
And to fully deserve my 15 points, here's what I have so far on my Lucid Dreaming task completion, which I have utterly failed to achieve to this point. It's probably going to insanely long by the time I'm done with it, so I might as well put part of it here. My struggles to date (minus an incident that I will include in the actual task completion because it's cool):
4/20: The plan tonight is to wake up at 4:00 A.M., *somehow* manage to force myself to stay awake and (semi-)alert for about a half-hour, and then attempt a lucid dream. I've had success with this method in the past but I've yet to have a lucid dream that I was really aware in, nor have I been able to have control over the dreams. Need to remember to FORCE myself to wake up when I find my grip on reality slipping. Short lucid dream > dream I don't remember at all.
If all goes really well, I'll attempt to pull off some sort of a task. I definitely want to do something that's out of my group or level range. "Confuse a plant" might be fun.
4/20 (later): Been pondering the time-frame thing. Supposedly, REM cycles are every three hours, so I'd be better off at 5-6 A.M., but that might be too late? Well, I'll try again tomorrow if it doesn't work tonight.
4/21: Utter, abject failure. I had set two alarms, one softer alarm playing music to wake me up before the loud one- but due to DST wackiness, the soft one was off by an hour, and I just shut off the loud one. So I ended up waking up at 5:15. Oh well, I said, that works too, right? So I forced myself to read (Stranger in a Strange Land) for about 15 minutes. I started to feel fairly awake, so I went back to bed and tried to drift into a dream. No luck- I was too awake, and wouldn't fall asleep with my mind awake. After a while I just rolled over and went to sleep. I can't even recall any dreams from last night, which is really disappointing.
5/3: Did I ever mention how pathetic it is that I'm trying to pull off my OWN task and I can't even do it? I'm lame. *sigh* I'll have a couple of chances to try again over the weekend. Must not get too down-trodden. Sadly, that's the worst possible thing I could do. It's all in the mind! Think positive!
