Two days of fun lucid dreams
The last few nights have been fun. I've been drinking a little red wine each night before going to bed, and the last two nights I've slept about 4-5 hours, at which point I'm awake enough to start the new day. However, I then lay down, try to fall back to sleep, and also just try to focus on the present moment, and as a result, each morning I've had hours of fun, lucid dreams.
Partially asleep while driving and shopping
Today I was able to maintain a state of being nearly asleep while driving and then while shopping. I've done this before while driving; it helps make the time go by faster, especially when the ride is easy. (Yes, I know this can be dangerous, but I've managed to control it so far.) But today was the first time I ever maintained this state while doing something else, in this case, shopping at a WalMart somewhere here in British Columbia, Canada (either Quesnell or Williams Lake, I don't remember now).
A schizophrenia-like area of sleepland
Not feeling well (ongoing headache), I went to bed before 8pm last night. Somewhere during the night, before 2am, I was in a strange area of sleep consciousness where I'm wide awake, and I know I'm asleep and laying in my apartment, but there are other very real 'people' around that really aren't there. Call them hallucinations or schizophrenia-like experiences, but they are as real as this computer.
"He wrote the hell out of it"
Just laying in bed here tonight, falling asleep, when the thought/voice comes into my head: "That was the best song ever. He wrote the hell out of it."
I have no idea what that means. I don't know why I get these things, or how the brain works, but any time I'm not too tired and I can relax deeply without falling asleep, I get to "hear" things like this.
Regained consciousness, couldn't control snoring
In my latest sleep experiment, I was able to regain consciousness during sleep while suffering from sleep apnea (okay, snoring), but I couldn't alter my breathing enough to stop it.
Enhance your lucid dreams with a simple practice
As I noted in my last blog entry, I've been working on a method to enhance my lucid dreaming abilities that I read in a book titled The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep. Based on my own experience, I think it makes a lot of sense, and more importantly, it works.
The method I'm working on right now is the first of four "Foundational Practices" that the author introduces, and this first method is to practice dreaming during the day. Specifically, as you go through your daily routine, see all of your life as a dream. As the author states when talking about this first foundational practice:
"... throughout the day, practice the dream-like nature of life until the same recognition begins to manifest in dream. Upon waking in the morning, think to yourself, 'I am awake in a dream'. When you enter the kitchen, recognize it as a dream kitchen."
Trying for a good night's sleep
I haven't reported any OBE's or lucid dreams lately because I've been keeping myself a little sleep-deprived, and also drinking a little bit each night, in order to keep them from happening. Pretty shallow, I know, but sometimes you just need a break, and this is the only way I know to do it. The dreams still keep coming, but this approach seems to stop, or at least slow down, the OBE's and lucid dreams.
If you don't experience these things on a regular basis it may be hard to understand, but some times what you need is just a good night's sleep, with no special effects.
A friend learns about sleep paralysis
I just wrote the following text in an email to a friend, in response to a message where he wrote about having a bad stomach cramp as he fell asleep, during which time he was also unable to move his body. Rather than alter my email, I thought I would just include it here verbatim:
Back in the U.S., and the stress of driving through Seattle
Having just driven back across the border, from Canada back into the U.S., all I can say is, wow, I can't believe how much stress people are under here, and that's just from driving on the expressways(!). Coming back into Washington and trying to drive through Seattle, I just wanted to pull over to the side of the road and curl up in a little ball. Yet other people live this way on a daily basis?! Wow. I know my blood pressure just rose at least 10-20 points.
Straddling the border
One thing I'm now able to do from time to time is to straddle the borderline between being awake and being asleep. What I mean is that in one instant I can be laying here in my bed, in my dark and quiet bedroom, and in the next instant (and by that I mean less than a millisecond) I can be in another world, a dream world, where people are talking, a radio is playing, or a phone is ringing. On a good night I can bounce back and forth between the two worlds several times before falling asleep, and the process is great fun.
