Centering: This is getting your consciousness shut down to where all you feel is yourself. Beyond the worries of the day, beyond all of your hopes and fears and dreams, this is the "kernel," the core personality program that your everyday thoughts and feelings are spawned by. If you recognize this from earlier in the course, you're right -- it's just [trance]. But centering gives it an additional twist.
"Centering" involves compressing this soul-core down into a tight ball, located at your solar plexus -- the manipura chakra. Remember that you are inside your own consciousness -- you must become that one point. You'll know when you've gotten it right, because suddenly the term "centering" will make perfect sense. You'll be hanging in a perfect balance between your head and your feet; it's truly a unique experience.
I tried combining the above meditation, with some random other meditation I'd read somewhere that suggested using the chakra as a door to OBE. I feel asleep instead and had my first lucid dream, by accident, and got to see how cool lucid dreaming really was. I suppose this was a Wake Initiated Lucid Dream (or WILD) but using a chakra as... well... as a metaphorical focusing point and nothing more.
2007/5/27
I just sort of faded into consciousness, sloshing around in the swimming pool of my old neighborhood, with full knowledge that I didn't live here anymore-- that I was dreaming, even with the scorching heat and texture of the aggregated stone pool-border, the strain as I pulled myself up to sit on it, and the vivid smell of chlorine making it a darn good imitation. I noticed, though, the leaves of a neighbor's tree looked enormous, and like crumpled sheets of lime and emerald cellophane glinting in the sunlight.
I'd listened to this podcast before, on lucid dreaming. I remembered that the interviewee said that she once demanded to speak with who was "in charge" of her dream, and her subconscious spoke directly to her about what she needed to know. None of this stupid dream "symbolism" stuff.
That sounds neat, I thought, so I pulled a towel out of thin air to dry myself off, and made my way into the house to look for somebody to demand the same from. The whole place was empty... it wasn't a very noisy neighborhood in waking life, neighbors tended to keep to themselves, but even inside the house there was nobody.
Comparing the architecture of this unit as I remembered it in waking life past, the dream-house looked "scrambled": a chandelier would be half a cupboard or something, and in the dream, I "remembered" reading somewhere that certain features of a room during an OBE would appear distorted out of place. In waking life, I'd never read such a thing. But I thought, very un-lucidly, Since I'm the only one here, I might as well do my chores.
I split into two dream bodies. The other me (who I only sometimes took the point-of-view of) walked around to do her chores while the true me (who I mostly took the point-of-view) sort of followed her around. Lucid-me kept looking for someone to demand a subconscious conference from. This me, experienced a "parallel dimension" of the house, one that permeated the other me's version but whose features were differently scrambled. In our wanderings, we both came up to a wall. Other-me came to a wall, that is, but True-me saw that where Other saw a wall, there was really a rectangular void.
So, either I could trust True-me my lucid self, run into a wall and look like an idiot, or trust Other-me my fake dream-consciousness and never find anyone to talk to here or walk into a scary Void and lose my soul then wake up unharmed but traumatized. (I can't believe I can still lose an argument with myself.)
I walked through, and Other-me blipped out of my "point-of-view" option. (Whew! I could have completely lost lucidity by dream-logic choice.)
The Void was only a few millimeters thick, after all... on the other side was a vast hall made of white square ceramic tiles, and I had walked on to a similarly-tiled beam set high up in this hall. What now, I thought miserably, since even though I knew that I was dreaming, I didn't feel like I had much dream control.
Just then, a little spider robot clanked up the hallway below, paused, and blee-blooped up at me.
"Please," I called down to him, "I want to speak to whoever's in charge of this dream!"
You come down here, Shelob-D2 seemed to answer.
Even if I knew I was dreaming, I felt much readier to fall then fly, and the beam was really high up. I thought this must be some sort of test. So, instead of flying, I shape-shifted into a jelly mold (strawberry flavored, but how that felt, I can't describe since I automatically shifted to third-person-omniscient viewpoint for it, pity...) slopped off the beam, went splat on the floor, pulled myself back together in human form, and smiled smugly at the robot.
The robot clattered away, unimpressed. I got the sense that every other dreamer it ushered through, chose to turn into a mold of strawberry jelly to circumvent the "no-fly" rule, and then expected it to applaud their creativity.
I followed Shelob-D2 to the end of the hall, into my sophomore high school theater. Only a few spotlights illuminated Ben Vereen coming out of the wings. Well, the only time I was onstage in waking life was as a chorus girl for Pippin, which was my mom's favorite musical, so not really surprised that he'd be the voice of my subconscious.
So... what great secret wisdom would my subconscious impart? Oh, just something about every other language I've learned while growing up abroad, was not lost like I thought but still "in storage" backstage, on the props table— oh, and, with a lopsided smile and a quick shake of the head: "You're not ready to hear the rest."
He forcibly ushered me out. The dream continued, but after I'd stopped swearing, the lucidity left completely.
I've heard that's not a typical first lucid dream. That came later: short moments of lucidity that my dream-self shrugs off as just a mildly interesting thing, or allowing dream characters to talk me out of being lucid. In one lucid dream, I turned night into day, and was so shocked that I'd done it that I woke up, even if, once I thought about it, there should have been no physical laws of varying difficultly to bend. It should have all been in my mind, so just as easy to turn night into day as it was to expect a beach towel to be there and suddenly the beach towel will be there.
One time, I did attempt to initiate an OBE from a lucid dream. I'd read everywhere that OBE’s from lucid dreams can be done, and are even recommended to start with-- even that an OBE and a lucid dream are no different. I found no instructions on specifically how to do this, though. The only way I could guess, involved becoming aware of my sleeping physical body, and going out from there. I woke myself up that way.
Recommended Links
Lucid Dreaming with Stephen Berlin - From keeping a dream journal to lucid dreaming and control both organically and technologically, and many personal transcendental dreams in between, Berlin takes us through it with a brashness and authentic character that delivers a series both very informative and very entertaining.
5 Layers of a Lucid Dream - Most onieronauts seem to make the distinction between a "low level lucid" and a "high level lucid". Stephen LaBerge's Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming even quotes Oliver Fox's levels of pre-lucidity. Jones' layers of lucidity, I've found to be the most applicable and comprehensive.
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