In my dream, I am in the lobby of a BIG building, and I mean BIG.  The inside is pristine.  The floor is that brownish weird stuff that is hard like marble, but they use in some Post Offices and older Hotels and stuff.

As soon as I’m in the lobby, I get the impression that I’m very high in the building, on a very high floor, and I have the distince notion that somewhere in the building is something I’ve either seen or been to before.  Like I’m vaguely familiar with the building itself.

I have the sudden idea that I need to find the 11th floor.  So, I go into the building looking for an elevator that will take me to the 11th floor.  I find an elevator, and go into it, and there is somebody in there, and I notice that the elevator only goes down to the 12th floor, and not wanting to look stupid by just walking back out of the elevator, I push a button (forget which one), and go to that floor, the person in the elevator doesn’t get off, and I push the button for whatever floor I had just been on.

I walk around and find another elevator, and this one goes to the 11th floor, meaning the buttons start at 11 and get higher.  I push the 11th floor button, and the elevator then goes down and the doors open.  I step out and I’m in a room that is very small, compared to the rest of the building.  It is approximately 12′ by 15′ or so.  There is a long table in the corner, the table is like one of those in a school cafeteria, the long ones.  There are two men sitting across from each other talking to each other, very casually.  their posture is such that it’s like they are on their break or something, slouched in their chairs and elbow on the table, head on their hand.

I look at this room, and remark to myself how small the room is, and I then think that with the REST of the building being so big, there MUST be something else behind the walls, but I do not remember seeing any other doors or anything.  Just the room.

I then decide I need to explore the building and see what else I can find.  The rest of the dream is very non-descript as I just walke around and saw a lot of people in different rooms.

Interestingly enough, Jenny and Erin have decided to have a contest on their blog for all the tagged bloggers. The contest (as I see it), is basically to see which of us can best answer the following question:

How big of a role do habits play in your daily life? Do your habits typically form intentionally or unconsciously? What approaches have you found successful in shaping them?

So, if I may, I’ll answer the question one part at a time.

How big of a role do habits play in your daily life?

I think this is a loaded question, because habits play a HUGE role in everyone’ lives. Show me a person without habits, and I’ll show you a person who has to read a driving manual each and every day before even getting behind the wheel.

Habits are a necessary outcome to the way our brains function. Without habits, life would be nothing more than a constant mess of signals all competing for our attention. As far as habits in MY life, I strive to develop good habits, as I’m sure we all do deep down.
I have been working on developing the habits that form the basics of Lucid Dreaming. I am not yet where I’d like to be as far as the frequency of my lucid dreams. My ultimate goal is to be able to have a lucid dream each and every time I go to sleep, if I so choose.

My deep belief in the power of building habits out of the basics is why I wrote the posts that are listed as “The Basics of Lucid Dreaming” in the sidebar. If you haven’t yet read those, I recommend it. It will change your life. Promise.

Do your habits typically form intentionally or unconsciously?

Both. Habits are ALWAYS being formed unconsciously. We do, however, have the option of forming habits consciously as well. Great care must be taken in forming habits, that we forming habits that will empower us to live the lives we choose. A great deal about habits has been written on some of the excellent Personal Development Blogs on the original list at Priscilla’s blog.

What approaches have you found successful in shaping them?

There are several. For the past 5 or 6 years, off and on, I have been learning as much as I can teach myself about Neuro-Linguistic Programming. To me, NLP is a promising technology and an awesome tool. I totally fell off the bandwagon for the past couple years. I finally decided to get back into it more more hot and heavy, and am now re-reading “Unlimited Power” by Tony Robbins. As far as specific tools to develop and shape habits, one NLP Pattern I’m particularly fond of is the “Swish Pattern”. This is an awesome tool because it takes a bad habit, and simultaneously replaces it with a more empowering habit. Two Birds, One Stone.

Another tool I’ve come into contact with lately is the NLP Pattern called the “New Behavior Generator”.

If you are open to developing great and empowering habits in record time, I recommend you read the following sites for NLP Information.

NLP 101

NLP University

Well, I guess that about covers it

This is probably one of the most exciting posts I’ve put on this blog to date!

When I wrote about doing Deep Trance Modeling in a Lucid Dream, it was just an idea I wanted to try out. Well, I am proud to say that I’ve done it and it works! At least for me…..

So, here’s the good stuff. A couple weeks ago, I had come home from work at 3am. I piddled on my computer for about 2 hours or so, then went to sleep for a nap. I woke up to have lunch and decided to head back to sleep for about one and a half hours before work. I realized that since I’d already slept enough for at least 2 good deep delta
sleeps, I would have a good chance of having a lucid dream.

So, I lay down, and I decided to try to induce a lucid dream with the WILD technique. I picked a woman that I wanted to use as my first test of “manifesting a dream character”. For now, I’ll have to keep her nameless as she has no idea that I’ve done this yet. I simply focused on the idea of her as I fell asleep, with the intention of seeing her in a dream.

Well, I sensed the initial onset of hypnagogia, and next thing I know, I am in a pub the likes of what I’ve seen in Scotland. The bar was made of the dark heavy oak that is stained and finished. I walked a few feet, there were several people in the room. My friend isn’t in the room, so I decided to try out the technique that Scott Lee mentioned of intending a person to be behind you, and then turning around. IT WORKED!

So, as soon as she sees me, she walks up to me and starts groping me and kissing me. I am already lucid at this point, and remember my previous intention to try out Deep Trance Modeling next time I’m in a lucid dream. I pushed her away and said “Stop. This isn’t the real you. Now, I fully intend that you will become as close to the real-life version of XXX as my mind can reasonably muster up, based on everything I know about her. IS THAT CLEAR?”

I am pretty assertive with the dream character, and as soon as I made that demand of her, she transformed from this supersexed person into a regular person. I swear, it was like an instant transformation. She is now standing there completely like the real person saying “yes, I understand you. What am I doing here?”

I reply, “Well….” and proceed to ask her a bunch of questions, with the intention of gaining a deeper insight into her as a person. She answered the questions in great detail. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to put a notebook by me and forgot the questions and answers:(

Interestingly enough, there were a few questions that her reply was, “I can’t answer that question because you don’t have the answer in your mind.”

I challenge you to give this strategy a shot and let me know in comments how it goes.

p.s.

As I am sitting here writing this post for you, I realized that this strategy could likely be easily modified to incorporate the “New Behavior Generator Strategy“.

Here’s my story:

I first heard about Lucid Dreaming one night in 1995. I was standing a roving security watch for the old Chief Petty Officer’s (CPO) barracks while stationed in Groton, CT for Submarine School. I was making a tour of their night club to make sure there were no safety hazards and all that. Lying on one of the tables was a magazine, which I think was Discover or OMNI. There was an article in there about Stephen LaBerge, the unofficial father and resident strong-man of Lucid Dreaming. I don’t remember anything specific about the article, other than it had a small picture of LaBerge looking at one of his DreamLight or NovaDreamer devices.

I was intrigued by the article’s main point of being able to be fully conscious while in a dream and being able to take control.

My first Lucid Dream didn’t occur until around the summer or early fall of 1996. I was on a Western Pacific deployment on board the USS Hawkbill, my first submarine. We were on a specific mission at that time that I could not perform my usual Electronics Technician duties due to my security clearance having some administrative isseus (waiting for paperwork). Because of this, I was elected to wash laundry every day for 10 people, on a first-come, first-served basis. I usually had all the laundry done by anywhere from noon to 3pm each day. So, lucky me, I was able to get anywhere from 12-15 hours of sleep each day, which is usually unheard of in the US Navy Submarine Force.

So, one day, I was asleep and had My first lucid dream.

That is how I got into Lucid Dreaming.

Thanks for the shout-out Ben!

At one point midway into his post, he asks, “I wonder… what would some dream shrimp taste like? Or some dream milk?”

Then he posits, “My guess is my mind wouldn’t be able to conjure up the non-vegan foods that I’ve not eaten for so long and have little to no memory of.”

I tend to disagree with this a bit, because the mind doesn’t forget things like that. I remember a dream in which I was visiting with a person I knew as a youngster, that I haven’t really consciously thought about since I was about 6 or 7. The brain remembers basically every experience you have, and in the Lucid Dream State, or any dream state, you have unparalled access to the reserves of your subconscious mind and your storehouse of memories.

Check out Ben’s entire post and leave a comment to let him know what you think.

BANG!

You are off running. You are in a close 2^nd place as you are rocketing toward the finish line. You are paying particular attention to the signals your body is giving you. Your muscles start screaming subtly for more air, so you adjust your breathing rhythm to match. Suddenly, before you know it, you are the leader of the pack. And sooner than you can realize, you are over the finish line, breaking the outstretched tape. You win.

In this post, I’ll be discussing how you can use Lucid Dreaming to enhance performance in just about any area of life.

As we look into how we can do this, I’ll first explain how my urge for writing this post came about.

A few years ago, I came across a Wikipedia article on Deep Trance Identification (DTI), sometimes referred to as Deep Trance Modeling (DTM). This is basically being put into a hypnotic trance and then having your unconscious mind recall everything you have ever known about a person you might want to gain more insight into. After the unconscious mind does this, you can then “step into” that person and experience awareness through that person’s eyes.

I began to wonder if this would be possible while in a Lucid Dream. The dream state is, after all, essentially the same as being in a hypnotic trance. The dream state, like the hypnotic trance, is the deepest and fullest connection we can have with the unconscious mind.

So, I began to wonder if I could use lucid dreaming to do the equivalent of DTI/DTM.

Which brings us to the “how”.

For the purposes of this, I’ll be assuming that you are now able to Stay in a Lucid Dream as long as you want, and Control the Dream. If not, check out my posts under “Basics of Lucid Dreaming” in the sidebar.

So, try this. Let’s assume you’re thinking about asking for a raise at work. You may be anxious about how to approach your boss and ask. So, next time you are in a lucid dream, create the dream setting to be at work, just outside your boss’s office. Tell your mind that your boss is in the office. Make sure to tell your mind that the character of your boss is the best, most accurate model of your boss that your mind can conjure up.

Knock. Go in, and point blank ask for the raise. The worst that can happen is your “boss” can say no. If your boss says no, don’t take that as an answer. Ask, “What do I have to do or say to you to make you want to give me a raise?”

What this does is that your mind, using your mental model of your boss, will give the most logical answer it can think of.

The key here is to refine your model by interaction in the real world. I know it may sound difficult, but honestly, the unconscious mind registers and stores millions, if not billions, of bits of information that never even makes it into conscious awareness.

So, when you at work (real world), go to your boss and say or do whatever the dream boss said to say or do. Don’t worry so much about remembering everything that is said. Obviously, you’ll want to pay attention to what is said, but do so as you would any other conversation. Keep the unconscious mind free to register everything else, which is what it does best.

Then, next time you are in a lucid dream, repeat the process, and see if anything different comes up that you should pay attention to.

Of course, it goes without saying that if your boss gives you the raise the first time, then there’s no need to repeat the process!

The beauty of this technique is that it can work for just about anything. Is there a special someone you want to connect with at a deeper level, or even someone you WANT to be your special someone? Get into a Lucid Dream and ask how.

Are you a race car driver wishing to cut down on your lap times? Grieving and wanting to communicate with a lost loved one? Programmer wanting learn from some of the coding legends? Are you a marketer wanting to get the best of Seth Godin’s knowledge? A blogger wanting to create a blog the likes of The Green Geek or Scott Lee? The examples for this are limitless. Let me know in comments what your ideas are.

In this post, I will attempt to answer all the questions that you have ever wanted to know about lucid sex, but were afraid to ask! For starters, let me just say that lucid dreams can serve a very, very wide range of purposes, from the erotic to the practical. In lucid dreams, you can do anything! And that means anything – anything within the infinite power of your subconscious mind, including things like tackling the whole meaning of life problem. Eventually, though, we all want to have sex. Well, okay, let’s think about how we go about doing that.

There are some common rules for lucid dreams that you need to follow in general, and these rules stay true about sex in lucidity just as well. These rules include staying calm, no matter what happens, and the techniques to prolong the dream and keep it vivid. Techniques like Yelling as loud as you can, spinning like a tornado, and using anchoring techniques, as Bill has described. The great thing about all of this is how it can be related back to lucid dream sex. Especially spinning like a tornado, we will have to get creative with that one. Though staying calm is probably the most important factor during lucid dream sex.

The sex needs to be soothing, relaxing, and yes, calm sex, in order for this to work, or at least work for an extended period of time. Allowing yourself to get too excited will “short circuit” the experience and you’ll find yourself awake in reality, on your bed, sad that you wasted the opportunity.

But you may have already obtained lucidity several times. You are maybe an experienced lucid dreamer who just wants to get more possibilities for lucid sex. In any case, how do we get to the point of sex? What is the best way to “set up” the scene? There are all kinds of ways.

You can spin into a new location, for one. Or you could fly to a new location. You may want a bed, but you may also want all kinds of places. Lucid dreams allow you to have sex right out in public, if you want, so you could fly to somewhere like a shopping mall, downtown district, the top of a skyscraper, the middle of a crowded street, your imagination is the only limit. Jeez, you could even get into a ship and have sex in outer space! I rest my case. Flying and spinning are usually the two things that work best to get you from one place to another in the dream world.

To get things to manifest, including the girls or guys you would like to have sexual encounters with, it works the same as anything else in lucid dreams. Simply make a decision for them to be somewhere at some particular time, when they are not in your present line of sight. This is easier than getting them to just materialize(poof!) out of nowhere right in front of you. So decide that the guy/girl is around a corner, behind you when you turn around, over a hill, behind a door or wall, whatever you’re around at the time.

But a quick question to consider. Lucid dreams do not often last a very long time, unless you are highly experienced. There are individuals who have spent years mastering lucid dreaming and are still having what seems like seven to ten minute sessions of lucidity. For your first time of lucid sex, I suggest having the person you want to have sex with materialize already nude(or in whatever state of dress you prefer, ready for sex), and basically just dive right into it as soon as possible. Similar to the first time you have sex in reality, it is okay if the first time is short or not everything you would like it to be. Sex during lucidity is something you must continually work toward and build your experience with.

There are a lot of sites that are dedicated to lucid dreaming, or selling lucid dream related products that always use the “erotic adventures,” as a reason for getting into lucid dreaming. I do not think sex or anything erotic is what you should start with, because erotic experiences, both in reality and in the dream world, can be a bit tricky. If you are new to lucid dreaming, start with small, simple experiences. And get flying down. Flying is essential because flying can basically take you anywhere.

Now, once you do get to the point of successful dream sex, the experience is a delightful one. If you are having sex with acquaintances, people you know but cannot normally have sex with, or even celebrities – you can then wake up and tell them you’ve had sex with them, and mean it! You just…had sex in the dream, that’s all. I warn you, though, this can be a strange thing to do, and I might even suggest that you stay away from having sex with people you know in dreams because of how real the entire experience seems. I have gone up to people and told them I either made out with them or had sex with them in my dreams – the reaction is one that is a bit stand offish. So, maybe if that IS something you are going to do, go ahead and keep it private.

The experiences are so vivid and real that it will seem after you’ve woken up that whatever happened in the dream actually happened, and rather than a dream it may even feel more like a memory. Similar to what you can to do create a dream guide, you can create any dream character you want by drawing them out on paper or visualizing them in your mind. So girls, design your dream guy either by photograph, drawing, sketch, painting, and leave it to your mind to make it realistic and beautiful. Guys, you can create the perfect girl and then experience what she is like right there in the dream world. Your mind has the power and the ability to do all of this to a degree that is just as good, if not better because of the possibilities, as waking life.

This has been fun. I’d like to thank you for reading and I’d also like to thank Bill for letting me do this guest post. My name is Scott Lee and for more from me you may want to check out my website and blog at DirtyMechanism.com.

(ed: Thanks to Scott for this awesome and enlightening look at sex in lucid dreams. I asked him to write this, since I wanted to know more, and I’ve never experienced it myself yet. Fortunately for you and I, he graciously agreed. If you have had any awesome lucid sexual encounters, or simply have more tips to offer, leave me a comment. Bill)

Before I start this entry, let me just preface by saying that I’m a fan of Jewel (the beautiful and very talented singer). You’ll see how this applies to the dream. I forgot to write this down in my journal, because I woke up and was in total awe about the dream itself. Shame on me, and I will recount what I remember.
Here’s the dream:

I am best friends with Jewel. We are as close as any best friends can be. Think “My Best Friends’ Wedding”, and that’s about how it is. Very close, share all our secrets, etc. I decide that I am madly in love with her, and want to be more than friends, blah blah. I get a nice bouquet of flowers and go to her to tell her. I end up spending some time there, I seem to recall. There is another guy there with us, a friend of ours. No idea who he is. All of a sudden, as I am about to tell her how I feel, this guy (let’s just call him ‘DORK’), gets on his knees and proposes. She is happy, and says yes, and I swallow my words, and say, “I’m happy for both of you.” They must be able to tell that something is wrong, by the way I dropped the flowers on the floor, and start what I think must be hyperventilating (ED: I’m not sure, as I’ve never hyperventilated, or had asthma). I then say again, “I’m happy for you.” I feign a smile, then run out of the room. I end up running into what is a high-school gymnasium, and I hear Jewel running after me. I hide behind the bleachers, and think “I hope she doesn’t find me back here.” So, naturally, she finds me there. We end up talking for hours, and I express to her how I feel, and tell her, “I’ve known you lots longer than him, and I LOVE you”. And we basically affirm our love for each other (as very best friends), and she tells me that she’s going to be very happy with her new fiancè. I then woke up, feeling a strange mix of emotions.

Now, that is basically what I remember of the dream. This is likely the most emotionally power-charged dream I have EVER had. In order to get across the point of the emotions I felt, imagine a mix of despair, sadness, misery, depression, anger, and love.

Think of the final scene of “Phantom of the Opera” once Phantom realizes he can’t have Christine (If you’ve ever seen the live performance. The movie just can’t catch it properly).

Think of how Peter Parker likely felt in “Spider-Man 2″ when it’s announced at the planetarium party that Mary Jane is engaged to the astronaut goofball.

I basically felt this stir of emotion for a few hours after I woke up. I ended up going to Jewel’s website and looking on Google to see if perhaps she HAD gotten engaged or something.

My wife is convinced that if I weren’t married to her, and if I had the chance to be with one celebrity, it would be Jewel. I’m not sure she isn’t right.

Does this mean I am an adulterer in my own mind? What causes dream emotion to carry over so strongly?

All I can say about it is “WOW”.

Having been actively blogging in the Lucid Dreaming niche now since November 25th, I am already seeing something interesting.

Lucid Dreaming, or being aware that you are dreaming WHILE you are dreaming, is a niche which appears to be relatively small at any given point in time, but is in fact much larger than anyone realizes.

Remember that old adage about “the average person only uses about 5% of their brain”? Well, that adage has now been modified by scientists to mean “the average person only uses about 5% of their brain AT ANY GIVEN POINT IN TIME”. I think the “market penetration” of the Lucid Dreaming niche is the same way.
Lucid Dreaming is a niche which appears to be very small, and I think that overall, more people are aware of lucid dreaming than was previously thought, and at any given point in time, only a small portion of these people are actively searching out data on Lucid Dreaming.

So, basically, my prediction is that, through the efforts of people like Erin Pavlina and the folks over at LD4ALL.COM, and hopefully my blog, Lucid Dreaming will explode more into public awareness and become a very valuable tool in many areas such as entertainment and therapy.

As usual, had no trouble falling asleep. Before I know it, I’m walking around in the inside of some huge office building that is rather sterile looking. windowless, whitewalls. At one point, I see a girl I used to have a WAY MAJOR crush on, in junior school. I’ll call her “A”, since I haven’t seen her in years, and I’m not certain she’d want to have her real name published here.

Anyway, “A” is standing outside one of the many offices, and this one seems to be the only one that has any people in it. She is standing at a desk that is outside the office. I walk up to her, and say “Wow, ‘A’! Is that you? I haven’t seen you in years! How have you been?”

“I’ve been fine,” she says, “How have YOU been Bill?” (it’s at this point that I start to get that feeling that something isn’t quite right, because, thought she was always nice to me, she never returned my feelings, and usually talked to me only in passing).

Then I ask her, “Are you married?”

“Yep, expecting 2 kids in a few months.” (More of the uneasy pre-lucid feeling).

I start to ask her another question, then I wake up. Of course, as soon as I woke up, I was thinking, “NO! I want to get back into that dream and see how she’s doing!”.

So, I closed my eyes, and used a technique similiar to that Erin Pavlina uses to continue dreams.

Since I had just woken up, it was fairly easy. I closed my eyes immediately and remembered all I could about right where the dream ended and remembered how I felt. I fell asleep and, while maintaining my consciousness went directly back into the dream. I was lucid this time, and was right back in the same building, in the same hallway. The desk is there. The funny thing, though? The office is now empty, as if nobody had ever been in there, “A” is not there, the desk, which was previously cluttered with papers, is not barren. Nobody at all to be found. Once again, I am alone in a lucid dream. This seems to be a pattern with me. I start walking through the building, but quickly lose lucidity, because I really lost interest, since “A” isn’t there to talk to anymore.

What is my brain trying to tell me?