This is going to be a dream journal entry for a lucid dream that I had last night, and since it's my first blog post here I'm going to include a good amount of background information too.
I've been a lucid dreamer, on and off, for about seven years or so. I first came upon it by accident in high school and then didn't pick it up again until not long after I graduated, when I realized that it was something you could actually work towards achieving. When I first started managing to have them on purpose I was fascinated with the idea that you could control what went on in your dreams; I basically wanted to build up a collection of superpowers. I was lucky enough to be able to fly without any effort as it was something I did normally even in non-lucid dreams, though it did take some practice to master. The next power, and the first one that I actually had to practice consistently to be able to use, was phasing through walls and other solid surfaces. After that, my list slowly started to build.... Over time I managed various levels of skill for telekinesis, shapeshifting, mega jumping, super strength, summoning, cryokinesis, body possession, mind control, teleportation, and some others that probably aren't coming to mind right now.
Around the time I really started becoming interested in lucid dreaming was also when I was first starting to get into taking hallucinogens. I also had a lot of anxiety at that time in life and was in a major depression. I used psychedelics and others regularly generally in high doses, but they just started to unmask more issues I had. I experienced severe dissociation on multiple occasions, but I was never able to achieve anything like ego death due to a strong inability to let go of my anxieties. Due to my dream world escapades, I was also attempting to control my trips not only in the sense of keeping myself grounded but in actually influencing the hallucinations in the same way that is possible in dreams. This, of course, led to many difficult experiences that never were able to go quite as I wanted, though it always felt like they had the potential to. That just convinced me to push further and further, until finally I had what was one of my last significant trips before taking a long hiatus from psychedelics that I'm not nearing the end of. That was an experience with a large dose of LSD, too large for me to influence at all.
In some ways I viewed this trip as negative because of how it unearthed more of my insecurities and continuing inability to achieve ego death, but in other ways I found it to be quite helpful. Something it made me truly realize is that I was treating hallucinogens as something separate from myself, when in fact they aren't at all; the hallucinogenic state is simply the part of our brains, our "mind", that we normally influence to create our imagination being stimulated from an outside source. There's no need to try control a trip because the trip already is you and the drug is just doing all the work for you, so all you really need to do is trust your own mind to follow your best interests (and why wouldn't it?) and everything will work out like you want. I realized this because even though I was far too gone to try an exert control over my hallucinations on that trip at all, it was that that actually caused them to form just like I had always wanted. It was like an acid trip at the level of control of a lucid dream, and I didn't even have to make an effort for it.
The more I thought about this, the more I could apply it to my lucid experiences. The best example of it that I can give is how I originally learned to overcome my inability to phase through walls in dreams. When I first started trying this, I would face the same problem every time: I could push through the wall if I tried hard enough, but it was extremely difficult. I would start by pushing my hands forward toward the surface and it would bend back like it wasn't totally stable, but still solid. The harder I pushed, the more it would begin to separate a bit like thick JELO, but it would show so much resistance. It got a little easier as time went on, but then something new occurred to me and I gave it a shot. And it worked! Basically, I just walked straight through the wall as if it was never there to begin with. I've used this method ever since and I've never had a single problem with it, and I can even go back to pushing on the wall as totally solid or having it bend if I feel like it. What I have since realized is that by outstretching my hands and expecting the wall to be a solid object I had to get beyond, I was giving it power.
I feel that when we try to exert control over hallucinations like this we're much more likely to come across these pitfalls, defeating the whole purpose. My mind was aware that I didn't want there to be a wall there, and if I had just gone about my business expecting it to be taken care of for me from the start then it would have. What's significant about this is that many of the areas of the brain involved in perception and imagination that become activated by dreams are also activated by hallucinogens; following this logic, I felt that the same concept of the mind being stimulated from an "outside" source (aside from your conscious control) should apply. For that reason I began trying to keep this in mind in my dreams, simply acting as if the things I wanted to achieve were already on their way rather than trying to create them myself. However, I also started smoking weed pretty heavily at this time and stopped remembering my dreams very well. Consequently, my lucid rate lowered significantly and I didn't have many experiences, but I never stopped trying to integrate these ideas.
So, with that all being said, on to last night!
I've been a lucid dreamer, on and off, for about seven years or so. I first came upon it by accident in high school and then didn't pick it up again until not long after I graduated, when I realized that it was something you could actually work towards achieving. When I first started managing to have them on purpose I was fascinated with the idea that you could control what went on in your dreams; I basically wanted to build up a collection of superpowers. I was lucky enough to be able to fly without any effort as it was something I did normally even in non-lucid dreams, though it did take some practice to master. The next power, and the first one that I actually had to practice consistently to be able to use, was phasing through walls and other solid surfaces. After that, my list slowly started to build.... Over time I managed various levels of skill for telekinesis, shapeshifting, mega jumping, super strength, summoning, cryokinesis, body possession, mind control, teleportation, and some others that probably aren't coming to mind right now.
Around the time I really started becoming interested in lucid dreaming was also when I was first starting to get into taking hallucinogens. I also had a lot of anxiety at that time in life and was in a major depression. I used psychedelics and others regularly generally in high doses, but they just started to unmask more issues I had. I experienced severe dissociation on multiple occasions, but I was never able to achieve anything like ego death due to a strong inability to let go of my anxieties. Due to my dream world escapades, I was also attempting to control my trips not only in the sense of keeping myself grounded but in actually influencing the hallucinations in the same way that is possible in dreams. This, of course, led to many difficult experiences that never were able to go quite as I wanted, though it always felt like they had the potential to. That just convinced me to push further and further, until finally I had what was one of my last significant trips before taking a long hiatus from psychedelics that I'm not nearing the end of. That was an experience with a large dose of LSD, too large for me to influence at all.
In some ways I viewed this trip as negative because of how it unearthed more of my insecurities and continuing inability to achieve ego death, but in other ways I found it to be quite helpful. Something it made me truly realize is that I was treating hallucinogens as something separate from myself, when in fact they aren't at all; the hallucinogenic state is simply the part of our brains, our "mind", that we normally influence to create our imagination being stimulated from an outside source. There's no need to try control a trip because the trip already is you and the drug is just doing all the work for you, so all you really need to do is trust your own mind to follow your best interests (and why wouldn't it?) and everything will work out like you want. I realized this because even though I was far too gone to try an exert control over my hallucinations on that trip at all, it was that that actually caused them to form just like I had always wanted. It was like an acid trip at the level of control of a lucid dream, and I didn't even have to make an effort for it.
The more I thought about this, the more I could apply it to my lucid experiences. The best example of it that I can give is how I originally learned to overcome my inability to phase through walls in dreams. When I first started trying this, I would face the same problem every time: I could push through the wall if I tried hard enough, but it was extremely difficult. I would start by pushing my hands forward toward the surface and it would bend back like it wasn't totally stable, but still solid. The harder I pushed, the more it would begin to separate a bit like thick JELO, but it would show so much resistance. It got a little easier as time went on, but then something new occurred to me and I gave it a shot. And it worked! Basically, I just walked straight through the wall as if it was never there to begin with. I've used this method ever since and I've never had a single problem with it, and I can even go back to pushing on the wall as totally solid or having it bend if I feel like it. What I have since realized is that by outstretching my hands and expecting the wall to be a solid object I had to get beyond, I was giving it power.
I feel that when we try to exert control over hallucinations like this we're much more likely to come across these pitfalls, defeating the whole purpose. My mind was aware that I didn't want there to be a wall there, and if I had just gone about my business expecting it to be taken care of for me from the start then it would have. What's significant about this is that many of the areas of the brain involved in perception and imagination that become activated by dreams are also activated by hallucinogens; following this logic, I felt that the same concept of the mind being stimulated from an "outside" source (aside from your conscious control) should apply. For that reason I began trying to keep this in mind in my dreams, simply acting as if the things I wanted to achieve were already on their way rather than trying to create them myself. However, I also started smoking weed pretty heavily at this time and stopped remembering my dreams very well. Consequently, my lucid rate lowered significantly and I didn't have many experiences, but I never stopped trying to integrate these ideas.
So, with that all being said, on to last night!