Ming the Mechanic:
Dreaming

The NewsLog of Flemming Funch
 Dreaming2004-06-10 09:01
12 comments
picture by Flemming Funch

More people seem to be writing about dreams they've had recently. And I've noticed myself that I'm suddenly dreaming a lot again. Every morning when I wake up, I've just been in an intensive dream. If I lie down for a nap, I dream very quickly. The dreamworld is suddenly much closer. And I have signs again of the more lucid kind of dreaming. Like flying dreams. Over the years I've had many dreams where I can fly. And in that kind of dream it always works the same way. Not like superman, but more like my body is really light, and if I kind of jump a certain way, I can then glide along for quite some time, only hitting the ground rarely. And once I get into the hang of it, I can take off a bit further over the ground. Always having to watch out for wires and that kind of thing. It requies quite some concentration and there's a certain aprehension involved in it. It is more like being able to miss the ground by a tricky balancing act than it is any rocket-powered superhero thing. But very cool, nevertheless.

I used to work much more deliberately on dreaming. I was into astral projection, lucid dreaming, Monroe's out of body experiences, Castaneda, Seth on Personal Reality, and whatever else I could get hold of that helped me dream more consciously or travel more deliberately in alternative realities. And one can quickly take it further if one puts one's mind to it. The most simple thing to start with is to write down one's dreams immediately, so one can get used to remembering them and being conscious of them. One can very well wake up several times every night and do that.

Then there are tricks for becoming more lucid. Lucid dreaming is essentially when you wake up inside the dream, being aware that you're dreaming, without leaving the reality you're in, but able to navigate around in it and explore it. One approach is to remind oneself frequently to check whether one is dreaming, even while awake. Then one might also remember to do so while in a dream. And then there are tricks like Castaneda's approach of trying to find one's hands when inside the dream. Which isn't easy. But if you can consciously become aware of your hands, then you can probably go a step further and do something with them.

For several years I had a job that allowed me to sit down and meditate for a few minutes every hour. And when I came home from the job I took a nap every day. This allowed me to be much closer to the dreamworld in general. I started frequently dreaming while awake. I'd sit by the computer and the wall to my side would dissolve and turn into a corridor or something, which I could walk down and interesting things would happen.

Or I would start dreaming by deliberately visualizing some other place before falling asleep. Frequently it turns into a dream reality, and things would start happening by themselves. And I would thus both fall asleep and wake up dreaming.

I would find that in the more lucid types of dreams, there would be certain places I'd frequently come back to. Not always the same place, but I'd often be aware that the place where I was a couple of nights before is "right over there". And the reality was very consistent. There's this place which is quite a bit like the society in the movie Brazil. It is very overcrowded, and there's like wires and cables and pipes everywhere, and shoddy building codes. I had a house and an appartment there. I'd often be driving or walking around looking for a place to sleep, ironically. And even if I found my own house, there would often be somebody else sleeping in my bed already. Very hard to hold on to one's property there.

Oh, and the more astral projection types of dreams that I could pretty much step into at will, where there were a number of consistencies too. My favorite approach of getting around was this surfboard, which I could fly on, like the Silver Surfer. Very different flying than the previously mentioned jumping and not hitting the ground type. And there was this blue-skinned Egyptian goddess ladyfriend I had there, whom I'd run into in all sorts of places.

Robert Monroe's out-of-body techniques is another approach again. I went through his various hemi-sync tapes, which essentially does some synchronization thing with the brain, to make it easy to let the body fall asleep while one stays awake. That part worked ok, but I didn't have any great success in going interesting places that way. You first have to drag your energy body out of your physical body, which isn't that straightforward. I didn't manage much more than lifting an arm or a leg that way. When I did manage by other means to do out-of-body experiences, I'd tend to be bouncing around and hitting walls in the darkness, finding it very hard to navigate.

Anyway, I do happen to believe that the worlds we can visit in dreaming is much more than just some recooked memories from one's day, or some random chemistry in the brain. I've seen too much to believe that kind of stuff. Although, sure, normal unconscious dreams have something to do with that. But the more interesting kinds of dreaming is something quite different. Something real.

I usually have found that my waking time is of higher quality when I spend more time dreaming. Solutions tend to appear by themselves, and inspiration is always close. Sometimes the full text of something I need to write appears fully formed.

So, I'm trying to form the intention here to dream more consciously again. I think we need to access more dimensions to solve our problems in the world. The reason we get stuck in things is usually that we think too one- or two-dimensionally about it. More fluidity and wholistic awareness is needed. And imagination and the ability to jump between diverse worlds and world views. Live, complex experience.


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12 comments

10 Jun 2004 @ 11:49 by Tlingel @69.33.46.10 : Brazil :-)
Not to mention that there is already there, in that world, a quality about {link:http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php?did=217&vid=217&xmode=show_article&amode=standard&aoffset=0&artid=000217-000078&time=1086891816|Brazil} that is very dreamlike already and does involve some quite interesting oniric sequences with the main character doing some flying of his own.

He He, what was that quote by Hemann Hesse, "I live in my dreams. That's what you sense. Most people likewise live in dreams, but not in their own; thats the difference."  (Steppenwolf, was it? Or was it Siddharta?)  



10 Jun 2004 @ 15:51 by Quirkeboy @209.92.185.196 : Lucid dreaming advice?
Im amazed at your ability to control your dreams so well.. do you mean you can literally dream on command? Or is it more of a trial and error thing? Ive had pretty regular success at regular lucid dreaming.. but Ive only been able to follow my mind from a waking state and into a dream state a few times .. its rather a conscious decision to give up control to the dreams and to merely act as an observer. But what a thrill to consciously observe your own brain falling asleep!!.. It seems so impossible .. to split your brain into the conscious and the unconscious!?! (Could this have anything to do with our separate fighting brain components in the other article you posted?)
Lucid dreaming Im pretty good at.. but do you have any tips or tricks to help me learn to consciously BEGIN to dream?? To dream while awake (like the dissolving wall of your office)??  



10 Jun 2004 @ 16:24 by ming : Dreaming
I must admit first of all that I can't always do it. Or, rather, there are periods of time where, if I've sort of done the groundwork, I can do it on command. I.e. if I'm generally sleeping enough, and spending enough time in a meditative state, and not just running around being stressed. And if I generally pay attention to my inner state, my feelings, perceptions, etc.

And then the trick is in starting off a somewhat different way than normally when one just falls asleep. Or even the normal ways of trying to be lucid. Not shying away from using deliberate imagination to get started. That can be done in various ways, but some of what has worked for me is:

Imagine anything that it would be interesting to explore. A mountain, a castle, a forest, a cave, a village. Deliberately construct the visuals for how you think it would look. In color, 3D, as clear and sharp as possible. And then add some other perceptions to it. Is it warm or cold, what does the air smell like, what sounds would one hear? There's then this shift that happens sooner or later, often sooner, where one no longer painstakingly tries to think oneself to what it ought to be, but the whole scene starts filling itself in, and things start happening. By themselves. One could say that the difference between something one just constructs and a real reality, dream or memory or remote viewing, is the degree to which one *discovers* stuff, stuff that is somewhat surprising, as opposed to just putting things there one already knows about. Most people have to overcome some issues of doubting what is there, thinking they just put it there from memory.

Anyway, so if I do that while falling asleep, it quite quickly slips into a conscious dream, where I can explore what is there. And usually, a bit later, it takes its own turns and becomes a normal dream where even weirder things happen.

And the more I do it, the more possibilities start spontaneously presenting themselves. Sort of like a portal opens. How about this reality? And I can either take the bait and look into it or just leave it alone.

Another approach, using imagination to start as well, is more OOB like. Since I was having trouble quite getting anywhere with the Monroe approach, what I started doing was to visualize another body. So, instead of working on crawling out of this one, I imagine another body standing next to my bed. And, again, it quickly started getting a life of its own. I discovered that my particular body that presented itself was this sort of golden, somewhat robot-like, figure. Always the same one. And once I got pretty good and perceiving it just standing there, I found that I could make it walk around, and if I paid really good attention to how it felt, I could then move most of my awareness over into it. And then start moving around more freely. It seemed to stay in what seemed to be this same physical reality, but not very limited by physical laws, so it could walk through walls and move very quickly.  



10 Jun 2004 @ 17:11 by McGurk @69.33.46.10 : The quote by Herman Hesse
is from {link:http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/personal/reading/hesse-steppenwolf.html|Steppenwolf}.

A young man wrote to Mozart and said, "Herr Mozart, I am thinking of
writing symphonies. Can you give me any suggestions as to how to get
started?"
Mozart responded, "A symphony is a very complex musical form, perhaps
you should begin with some simple lieder and work your way up to a symphony."
"But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were 8 years old."
"But I never asked anybody how."

"Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in."
—Leonard Cohen

Always remember that you hold the ace, which is your option to
play a different game...and in your game, you can make better rules."
—Erehwon  



10 Jun 2004 @ 18:08 by Quirkeboy @209.92.185.199 : Facets
Thanks! I'll definitely have to try your suggestions.. Ive had a weird outta body dream.. but not intentionally.
One of the times Ive successfully "accompanied" my brain into a dream state.. I formed a faceted metal seed.. and each time I took another step closer to dreaming one of the facets would open.. like a blooming flower.. The thing is I never saw what lay inside of the pod!?!  



10 Jun 2004 @ 18:18 by Tlingel @69.33.46.10 : Steppenwolf...
...yeah, that's what I though. Thanks, McGurk {link:http://www.nakedprogrammer.com/poetry/zelaznyPoem.htm|:-)}  


11 Jun 2004 @ 00:17 by ashanti : The Dreaming
Very synchronous. Specially after I had such a vivid dream about hanging out with you a while ago - I had another one again, different context, but same basic feeling. Really cool. The Dreaming - the original one, experienced and remembered first by the Australian Aborigines - showed our world as essentially more fluid, dream-like. I spent time with a community in the great red desert in Western Australia, and they inducted me into the Dreaming. It's almost beyond words, but they *live* in it when they are awake, not only asleep. It is so beautiful, magical, a much more deep and enriching way to live. Far more creative.

I'm noticing that the Dreaming is closer, we are more in touch with it, more people are able to access it, and interestingly, simultaneously, there is a lot of unmasking of things (not especially nice things) that were hidden in the past. There is definitely a movement in mass consciousness going on. I think your experiences with dreaming are yet another indication.

Layers of illusion are lifting.

PS - Steppenwolf - one of my all-time favourite novels ever! :-)  



11 Jun 2004 @ 03:45 by jstarrs : Reminds me...
...of a BBC docu I saw years ago - an ordinary guy of scientific leanings had invented a box that stimulated the alpha waves at a certain point of sleep so that the person connected to it was able to have lucid dreams, as he wished.
Well, the inventor tried the machine out on six 'students', over a weekend, in a house in the country. The docu related this...
One of the students told of his lucid dream experiences.
He said he'd 'woken up' on a desert island beach and saw a beautiful, naked woman, walking towards him. The interviewer asked what happened next but the guy was too embarassed to go ino the details.
I never saw any follow up on this box, anywhere.
I always wondered what the consequences would have been, if ever it had been commercialized?
;0)  



11 Jun 2004 @ 12:42 by Tlingel @209.178.189.175 : It's not only in dreams,
that we find ourselves facing what is yeat to be in what was long forgotten, and speaking what seems nonsense because we will not see its meaning.
(U.K. Leguin: "The farthest shore")  



13 Jun 2004 @ 21:56 by celestial @131.191.42.229 : More Than a Dream
In the third paragraph, last sentence, you say "But if you can consciously become aware of your hands, then you can probably go a step further and do something with them" makes me think of the "cursor" inside the computer. You're really on to something there Ming!!! Maybe you can go inside your own body and metamorphose into something else!!!  


11 Dec 2006 @ 11:10 by Catsman @222.155.158.195 : Starting a Dream
A very interesting technique I am working with to induce an OOBE actually happened by accident one day. I got up at 6am to goto work (I was a painter) and it was really raining hard. Halfway to the bosses house I got a txt to say "no work today, cya 2morro" so having a slight hangover and feeling a little unwell (nothing serious just blah!" I decided to go back to bed. It wasn't hard to go back to sleep and very soon it was about Lunchtime. I woke up, looked at the clock and decided to try a visulisation while I was very relaxed... This is where it got weird, I rolled my eyes up (towards my forehead) and just started with simple shapes etc. Before I knew what happened I was thrusted into a very Lucid dream, I recognized my old school but it had a a massive basement of underground passages (I would put this close to the DMT Vault for those of you who know) but much much bigger, the maze of passages would go on forever. Anyway back to the point, very early into the dream I "woke up" still dreaming, my eyes were moving very fast (as if a computer makes that ticking sound when its loading) and I was aware of my body in the bed and of the current dream still going on, but when i tried to actually wake up (or even sit up) i could not. It was the first time I had ever had Sleep Paralasys and It hasnt happened since. My advice to you, if you want to give it a try, when you wake (somehow you have yo be waking, don't know why) look up, close your eyes and "half blink quickly" like not quite blink but just flick your top eyelids as to simulate REM sleep. If you can easily go back to sleep normally then this is for you. It takes about 5 minutes, just try to visulize your last dream (especially if it was Lucid) and, while your concentrating on that, your subconciously working your eyes and telling your brain your going into REM sleep, so strap on your brain helmit because before you know it your in.  


20 Apr 2016 @ 18:27 by Gloriane @188.143.232.32 : woskyljhbBMvVOwGD
Gosh, I wish I would have had that inofmration earlier!  


Other stories in
2011-11-28 22:15: Jumps
2009-10-16 03:06: Magic reality
2007-08-20 21:59: Luxury subs
2004-11-19 17:50: Collective dream diary cartoons
2004-09-30 23:59: Breaking the Veil
2004-05-31 05:46: Transcendental Realms



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