梦里风花-宇宙之铁

-Dreamcatcher- wrote:The way you describe your version of the technique it doesn't require you to stay still as soon as you wake up and from the results people are getting I'm looking forward to this technique with great expectations and I thank you for introducing it here.I understood your technique but I would appreciate if you give an algorithm of actions someone who practices should use.What I mean is step by step instructions after waking in middle of night.

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Dear Dreamcatcher,

The SILD method was initially based on my own customized WILD routine, which given years of practice has enabled me to WILD at will. It was almost identical to Michael's technique plus a few extras. In the beginning we simply wanted to create a streamlined version of this WILD routine, but several revisions later we came to a very important realization -- it simply works better if we DON'T treat it as a WILD technique!

Before I get ahead of myself, lets look at Michael's method first. You were correct that the hardest part of that method is remembering to stay completely still upon awakening. In fact, if you finally manage to do this you hardly need any technique at all. Another problem is the method being very demanding on the proper mind/body condition at the time of the execution. Given the right condition, it is not impossible to have a successful WILD within minutes, even seconds! However, when the condition is not perfect, for example, when you are rather wide awake, the method will unlikely do you any good. You can try wiggle your fingers without using muscle but that will feel genuinely fake. You then move on to stare behind your eyelids but you will see nothing but blackness. You then try squeezing your brain but that simply feel weird... Let's face it, how are you supposed to squeeze your brain? Of course, all of these become very easy and real when you are in the phase or are on the edge of a phase, but the exercise itself is not really designed to move you toward the phase. In fact, the amount of concentration demanded by the exercise will often leave you wide awake!

Now let's look at SILD. Like Michael's technique, if you use SILD when you are in the proper mind/body condition, the cycling procedures will very likely result in rapid entry into the phase. However, since it is not a WILD technique, we don't care so much about producing immediate effect! Being able to WILD is a bonus, not a must. Thus, we do the cycling routines regardless of whether they cause any sensations to occur. Here we see a fundamental difference between the two methods -- where Michael's method requires focus, SILD requires un-focus. With SILD it is fair to say that the only thing you should focus on is how to quickly lose focus. You want to cycle through the senses in the laziest manner. You want to lose count. You want to forget where you are. You want to drag this on and on... Essentially you just want to fall asleep so much you give up on doing the exercise, which is perfect.

SILD then works its magic after you fall asleep. You may suddenly wake up again, due to the motion caused by the cycling, and instead of awakening into reality you end up going into a phase because SILD has already prepared your mind and body into the proper condition. If you combine SILD with WBTB, then your chance of becoming aware within your dreams is greatly increased because the routine somehow is pretty good at messaging that little bit of awareness into your dreams, as noticed by Rhwin.

As for your question, I suggest that upon waking up at night, you can immediately do a few rounds of SILD. This may lead you into a phase, but as I said you should not expect it. Better treat it as warmups. After 5 or 6 hours of sleep you will want to get up, stay awake for 5 to 10 minutes then go back to bed to do SILD. You may want to do a few extra cycles if you don't immediately feel sleepy. Remember, if you find yourself becoming more awake after doing SILD then you are apparently doing it incorrectly!

I hope this helps Good luck and happy lucid dreaming!

Senses Initiated Lucid Dre..

宇宙之铁 12.03.27

This post is a reply I gave to a SSILD user on another forum. It explains what I believe to be the theory behind SSILD. Previously I have always refrained from getting into such theories, or rather, hypothesis. I still don't like the idea of explaining things with unproven theories, but this time I feel the post may actually help SSILD users to use the technique more effectively. Thus, here it is:

Let me give you one theory which I like the most (I'm not saying it is THE theory. After all, we know so little about these things in general, so it is always better to stay curious and modest than pretending we know it all.)

First, let me provide a brief overview about the Focus Point model of consciousness. In this model, our consciousness is a vast and seamless "entity" (for lack of better terms) which covers a wide spectrum of "areas." These areas include our waking state, dream, everything in between and beyond (higher state of consciousness). Just like how camera lense works, "focusing" on an area makes that area appear clearer, and other areas become blurry. Once it's completely in focus, it becomes the focal point of our "self-awareness". In this model, falling asleep and entering dreams is essentially the result of our focus shifting into the dream area. What we typically see as a slow and gradual process (falling asleep) can in fact happen instantly if you could manage to shift your focus real quick. Whether or not this has any scientific basis I truly do not know. However, through years of practice I can indeed do this shift "manually" and sometimes very quickly -- shifting from complete waking state (with small degrees of controllable physical movements still present at the time of shift) to other states in mere seconds. One interesting state is the intermediate state between waking and dreaming. In this state, our self-awareness is no longer confined in our physical body, but it has not yet entered the "dreamland" and assumed a "dream body." Instead, it exists in pure intangible, shapeless state. Under this condition you can proceed to form a dream deliberately, or re-focus to move to a higher state of consciousness. This state is also extremely "fragile" because with but the slightest focus change you will return to the physical. In fact, it is not uncommon to be able to feel and command both the physical and mental at the same time, and that can produce some truly amazing results! Okay let's not get carried away, LOL. Anyway, because our physical input and output are not fully "shielded" from us at this fragile state, our "attention" can be rather easily distracted. For example, sudden sounds, abrupt change of ambient light, physical touches... when they occur we inevitably "pay attention" to them and as a result we change our Focus Point back to the waking state.

As you can see from the above, the way to move our Focus Point around is by "paying attention". If we pay a lot of attention to the physical then we remain physical. Likewise if we pay more attention to things beyond physical then we are moving the focus point of our self-awareness toward them much closer. That, is the theory behind SSILD.

During the SSILD cycles, the first one is almost entirely loaded with the physical. You stare at the blackness behind your closed eyelids, that is physical. If your room is not completely dark you may even see the outside light, and that's even more physical. You listen, and your ears are filled with outside noises -- fans humming, wind blowing, and all that weird stuff. You try to feel and all you could feel is your bodily sensations -- blanket rubbing against your skin, some itches, and that horrible backache, etc and etc. However, as you do more cycles, you may start to notice that these external sensations begin to fade, and some "internal" ones begin to appear. The more you cycle, the more attention you are paying to the internal sensations, and less attention are being paid to the external/physical ones. And that, moves your focus point closer to other areas in your consciousness. Think of this as a gentle massage of the mind. You are loosening the grips of the physical and warming up your mind for the more fun stuff.

Then you fall asleep. There are now more chances for you to become lucid in dreams because you have brought more focus/self-awareness with you. Or you may wake up into a false awakening. I suspect this is due to the fact that we all wake up multiple times at the end of each sleep cycle, and immediately fall asleep again. Since our focus point has shifted away from the physical so much during the exercise, when we briefly wake up we don't have the necessary physical input so our mind simply makes it up for such occasions and immediately goes to sleep again.

Sometimes we do just wake up for real. However, our link with the physical world is still weakened due to the exercise, and thus we have much better chance to manually shift our focus at this stage. This is very powerful stuff. Once you can utilize this, you will almost be able to achieve 100% success with the technique.

Additional note: I always encourage doing SSILD in totally relaxed, lazy manner, and allow your mind to drift into a trance. The trance allows you to relax very quickly and divert your attention from the externals. People often run into problems with SSILD because they try so hard to bring out the sensations, and all that does is to glue their attentions to the external ones. Traditional meditation/relaxation techniques do not mix in well either, because focusing on relaxing your body is effectively, well, focusing on the physicals.

I hope this explains it rather than causing more confusion, LOL. Again, I must stress that this Focus Point model is just one way to look at this "consciousness" thing, and by no means I'm pitching it as a "fact". It will be a lot more useful if you simply treat it as a "tool". And in that case, it works wonderfully.

The user had some questions so here is another reply from me
Questions are welcome, and no, it's no Disturbance at all, LOL.

1. You do each cycles in exact same manner, regardless of the sensation. Be it with or without the sensations, you just keep cycling through them. As you do more cycles, you get deeper into the trance (mind drifting back and forth), and you will notice that the external sensations become faded. For example, the humming from that ever-present AC unit no longer bothers you much, if not having completely faded away. Meanwhile, you may begin to notice the noises "in your head". And as you pay more attention to them they may become more pronounced. This has the effect of shifting your focus away from the physicals. The beauty of SSILD is that you do not have to do this deliberately. The trance works like a gentle wave that carries you away from the physicals. Thus, you need to ease up, and allow the trance to do the trick for you. Even if you absolutely do not feel anything you should continue to cycle, knowing confidently you are slowing detaching yourself from the grip of the physical world.

2. Typically 4 cycles are all you need. Some people fall asleep in the first couple of cycles and that is no good -- you are not done with your "mental massage" yet! Some people find it harder to fall asleep if they do more cycles, but that actually means they are doing the exercise incorrectly -- instead of riding with the wave, they are fighting against it! (People with traditional meditation/WILD backgrounds tend to do this.) Once you master the cycles, you can do as many rounds as you wish. You can massage your mind to such point that soon after your stop doing the cycles, you can shift your focus point in an instant and enter the dream world while being fully conscious. This, of course, is for more advanced users, so I won't recommend it to everyone.

3. Depend on what your beliefs are, the Focus Point model may contradict with what you believe to be the "truth". In order to not get into debate of whether or not this model TRULY describes the nature of our consciousness, I decided to call it a "tool". As long as it makes things easier then why not use it, LOL. For all matters of intent we now know that SSILD works, and this model seems not only explains it but compliments it quite nicely.

I hope this helps

Theory Behind Ssild

宇宙之铁 12.08.13

I know a lot of people have been seeing some great success with the SSILD technique lately and I've just posted an interview I done with him in the last week - http://lucidability.com/ssild-technique/

You should definitely check it out, he gives out amazing advice that can help a lot of people. The link on my site has a link to his forum (which is in Mandarin).

Hey mate, let's start with your favorite thing about lucid dreaming?

To me personally lucid dreaming is a viable path toward true spiritual enlightenment. I also like how it enables average people to learn more about themselves, solve daily issues, achieve better mental health, and ultimately discover a vast, fascinating, and whole new aspect of self-existence.

Can you tell us about any struggles you've had since you got started?

I had my first LD when I was 7, and I always had them intermittently until I was formally introduced to the concept at 18. I had my first enlightening experience with higher state of consciousness when I was 20. In order to reproduce that experience I started pursuing lucid dreaming actively, and that's when I ran into a lot problems and struggles. The frequency, stability, and lucidity of my LDs were simply not sufficient for me to reproduce that experience again.

I spent considerable amount of time to train myself with just about all major techniques, but found most of them lacking. At times it was downright frustrating. It wasn't until 10 years and thousands of LDs later I managed to reproduce that same experience, and through that experience I learned a great deal about human consciousness and that also created a breakthrough for me. After that I was able to induce and manage LDs with much greater efficiency.

Looking back I think the hardest struggle was the amount of effort it took to induce LDs frequently, and reliably. Take WILD techniques for example. It always took so much time every night that after a while you really become exhausted. The effort to reward ratio is simply too high. For really motivated newcomers this may not be a big issue, but for someone who was attempting lucid dreaming on a daily basis for more than 20 years it was frustrating to say the least.

What is the most important thing you've learned from your time in the dream world?

Do NOT carry any assumptions, bias, preconceptions, prepossessions, and so on into your dreams! I always tell my students that they should have the mindset of a newborn baby 鈥 innocent, curious, devoid of any preconceived notions. The inner world is so vast and mysterious that any human being, no matter how knowledgeable and wise, is reduced to illiterate to say the best.

People from background of science and religions tend to have very opinions on things, and IMO it can be more a curse than blessing. Such opinions, when met with the fluid and highly volatile dream world, can create severe consequences and blind one from seeing the true nature of it. Even if we don't approach lucid dreaming as some sort of spiritual pursuit, there might still be dangers when people end up perceiving what is illusory as real.

Do you take anything from your lucid dreams and apply it to real life?

Being able to interact directly with one's inner-self is a privilege. I think that alone gives me more purpose, directions, and happiness which is every bit as real as other things in my life. While I do see other real-life applications of LD, I myself am not a big fan of them.

There are people whose only motivations behind practicing lucid dreaming are for earthly gains and benefits. It's like giving someone a telescope and he uses that to stalk the girl next door. Having said that, I've successfully used LDs to aid my studies, learning skills, getting artistic inspirations, and even curing illness.

What's the best lucid dream you've ever had?

Aside from reaching higher state of consciousness, one of my favorite lucid dreams was had during a traumatic period of my life when my relationship with my wife was going through a very hard time. It was a consciously entered dream and I rose from the bed. The room was dark and apparently was the old house where I grew up as a child. I looked through the window and there across the street was a small church. It appeared to be Christmas season and snow was falling down from the night sky.

People walked slowly on the quiet streets, and they were all very happy. The little town looked beautiful and almost glowing. I looked back into the room and there in the corner is a small Christmas tree with a miniature merry-go-round. Under the tree there were hundreds of frames of varying sizes, and I discovered they all had my wife's pictures in them! It's a huge collection of memories from our near 15 years of marriage! In that moment I burst into tears and I knew what she really meant to me!

I walked out of the house and onto the street. I then shouted to the sky asking which path I should take. The first path, which I was contemplating really hard during the day, gave me a chilling wind from the sky, then a large empty candy bag, which has holes all over it, rolled across a dark and empty street. As I asked for the second path, suddenly an intense beam of light came from above and instantly turned night to day.

I was soaked in this almost blinding light, and feeling of happiness filled my entire being. I woke up from this and knew firmly where my heart belonged and which path I should take.

What is your favorite technique and why do you like it so much?

My favorite technique these days is SSILD (Senses Initiated Lucid Dream) which I developed two years ago. I like it for the following reasons: 1) it is highly effective and reliable. 2) It does not demand a lot of time and effort. 3) It is simple. Anyone can learn to do it quickly and it does not require delicate mental exercises.

Do you have an ultimate lucid dream you'd like to have?

No I don't. To me they are all fascinating in their own rights. I try to approach them with as little prejudice and preference as possible.

What is the strangest land you've even wandered through in a lucid dream?

A village entirely made of black inks. It's essentially what it feels like living inside a Zen brush painting (in 2-dimensions!). I myself was also part of it and it was actually raining (black inks too)! No, it's not dirty, and in fact quite breathtakingly beautiful!

If you could go back to the start would you do anything differently?

Yes. I'd not have wasted so much time with many of the traditional methods such as building awareness during the day, non-stop reflections and autosuggestions, and so on. These, in my opinion, are based on many false assumptions. I hope one day more people will realize this. As of now there is simply too much misleading information on the market and they are bad news for beginners.

Do you have any words of encouragement for all of us?

Lucid Dreaming is NOT difficult and you don't need to be gifted in order to master it. You need to have the right mindset, right tool, and a little bit perseverance. On my forum one of my first students spent more than a year without getting much result. After I started coaching him he gradually made progress slowly, but after I tweaked his routine, from which SSILD was born, he picked up speed dramatically.

By end of that year he recorded nearly 500 lucid dreams! He was hardly super bright, but always diligent and systematic. All he lacked was the right tool. I've kept the entire journal he wrote and it is a detailed, fascinating record of how a lucid dream rookie turned into a master in just a few months!

Today on our forum there are more than a dozen people who have learned how to induce lucid dreams on daily basis, nearly at will, all in much less time than my first student. To put it simply, if they can do it, then you can too! Don't let other people discourage you and don't let the ineffective methods/theories mislead you! Lucid dreaming skill can be obtained in systematic fashion by anyone. After all, such ability is inherent within all of us!

An Interview With The Crea..

jamiea... 13.02.24