Most lucid dreaming guides I found to always say the same things. Keep a dream journal, do reality checks, and set alarms so you can wake up and fall back asleep hoping to re-enter lucid. These are really good tips but ignore a lot of the mechanics of lucid dreaming and really just set the stage to open up the possibility. Here you can read an original method I made a long time ago that taps into the exact part of your brain you need to activate to reliably lucid dream easily.
My addendums to the classical tips
- Dream journals: are cumbersome and at times so are words; I always like to put a poster next to where you sleep. Put a poster on the wall where you can reach it without getting out of bed. In the past I’ve taped a string tied to a marker to the wall, but just keep writing implements where you can get them in bed. The poster gives you more space to DRAW and add space/styling to the words to help recall the vibe. Over nights you can put similar things together spatially on the poster and this helps to sort of map the dream space.
- Reality checks: Artifacts can help to serve as reminder, be it jewelry or tattoo. When you reality check pay attention to how you answer the question “am I dreaming?” How do you know, and what reasoning or feeling do you use? Personally for me RCs are the weakest tool in the box. I practice a similar “check” frequently where I look at myself from outside myself from an omniscient point of view. To me this is the next level after you dream check to the point where you already know the answer before you ask yourself if you’re dreaming, and it can guide in a soul-path kind of way.
- ALARMS: The “wake back to bed” method really helps with knowing the feeling of falling asleep. One of my favorite parts about mastering these skills is that I can fall asleep whenever I want. Stress can make it harder to “turn off”, but if you do the “wake back to bed” enough and really pay attention to all the phases and stages your specific body goes through, it makes going to sleep when you want more of a certainty.
My Method part 1: Phosphenes
The phosphenes are what you see when you close your eyes. The colors are often red and purple tones, but could be anything. Eyes still work and send signals to the brain even when your lids are closed. The colors are not actually from the veins and capillaries in your eyelids directly, but mechanical or electromagnetic stimuli normally. Some of it is also the brain trying to make sense of amorphous information, so that’s why the phosphenes can tend to move and swirl at your will.
PART 1 WHAT DO: Close your eyes to look at your phosphenes. Pick a spot in your phosphenes to focus on, but then relax your eye lenses like you are about to view a Magic Eye picture. So you can still see the colors and lines, but your eye lens isn’t focusing on them super hard and your eyes are relaxed. Now using more so your brain than your eyes, try to “zoom in” or delineate an EDGE of color in your field of view. Pick a spot, and try to see it in your mind’s eye in such a way where you could draw it if you wanted to. If you lose focus or the spot, just start over. It’s kind of like a muscle. You’ll be able to tell once it starts going smoothly.
Part 2: Cartoon Mode
When we see and experience things in dreams it’s happening on the same stage as your imagination. If you can strengthen your mind’s eye to create stronger and more detailed images, then after you wake up and it comes time to interpret the dream, your brain will have an easier time telling you a “story” with exact details rather than blurry vibes.
PART 2 WHAT DO: You don’t have to use a cartoon, but imagine any picture or image that you know well and can be animated, as well as low in detail to start. For example, Hello Kitty has less detail than Naruto, so she will be easier to use for this first. Then you can try more complex cartoons and eventually live-action images. Imagine the cartoon image still in your head. Now go in and “zoom” onto the edge or a line. For cartoons you can try to see the edge of the outline of the character.The goal is for it to be so clear that you could make a pixel painting of it. So as you get more confident and stronger with this try different images and you can try something moving as well.
Part 3: DOG MODE
I call this dog mode because it’s what I imagine I’d think like as a dog. We want to remove your conscious thought while veiling you in trust. “Calm yet alert,” like the gap between thoughts when a phone starts ringing, also often channeled when people are in the shower. Then your waking self can dissolve into the mind’s eye stage. The first two parts you can practice anywhere anytime to strengthen the ability. This part you can start when you’re ready to sleep.
PART 3 WHAT DO: A body scan relaxation at this point is really helpful, if not necessary. Start at your head or toes and progressively relax every body part you can think of moving your way across. This just helps make sure you’re not gonna have a random twitch, itch, or distraction. Then go dog mode. So cut off any internal dialogue or transiting thoughts. If this is difficult you can practice the silence by meditating separately. You can also hold a “om” or a tone in your head as long as possible to fill the space. With dog mode activated you layer the phosphene and cartoon modes together. The line will blur between the signals from your eyes, the mind’s eye stage, and inhabit the space you created with dog mode. At this point the only thing left is simply allowing yourself to drift off.
How I Think It Works
The pineal gland in the brain is a highly structured organ consisting of crystalline shingles arranged in a golden spiral like a pinecone. The mind’s eye stage is projected into based on the electrical going-ons in those shingles. The dream is only made sense of by correlating with those energies. We do not process the information stimulated there until after we wake up and the processing parts of the brain turn on. I think this works because you are correlating those mind’s eye excitations with more exactitude what they process into. It’s like walking the same path every day so it doesn’t get grown over. You are paving the way to have access to processing the hidden excitations when you are awake. Read about crystals in the pineal gland.
Let me know if you try this to lucid dream easily and what you think! I would love to get some “data” and make this guide even more useful to more people. (Make comments below)