Great. Thanks again, Alyssa for that introduction. It's good to be back with you all and we're gonna continue the reading of the book lucid talisman forgotten lower tonight. We're about a third of the way through it or so I think we're like, we're pretty much on schedule for where we need to be with with now that we're officially I think at the at the midpoint of our time together. And I saw a question in the chat about Canada book get to Canada and yes, I do ship to Canada you can buy the book without the coin you can just get the book in that's at Musa talisman.com is where the and so I I'm this is a self published book, which is interesting because I've published in a different variety of small press Academic Press. And this one I self published kind of for the fun of it to see what would happen and what would it be like to do something old school when I really got into it. I really enjoyed formatting the book and I enjoy shipping them out. You know, it's all parts of the fulfillment process. You know, it's been kind of kind of fun. I wouldn't do this for every project, but for this little project, it's it was the right was the right way to do it. So I think what we should do is i What I'd like to do is start with a bit of a open form of that. For those of you who were here, either last week or previous weeks, is there. Anything that came up about what we discussed or read about last week, an aha moment perhaps, or comment or big dream? anything of that nature or where question and so I can just create a little space here at the beginning and then we'll begin the reading.
Looks like I'm not seeing any hands raised out there. Darrell has something Okay. Go ahead, Darryl.
So yeah, I just want to thank you so much. I I've been both and I'm really enjoying it. And it's really fun. And it's totally adding some element of some texture, I would say. Yeah.
Nice. Thanks.
And sleeping around. Yeah.
Cool. That's great to hear. Yeah. So I mean, I'm not sure if anyone here is new for the first week. But what I do love about adding a amulet or you know is the physical presence, adding that into practice. It does something special. It it it concretizes it in some ways and in good ways a great grounds it and in fact that's really what the what will I think we'll even read about that a little bit tonight about how the talisman Yeah, we will we'll go over that how it can be grounding and be used as a grounding anchor. And it didn't, you know, I think we need these physical cues because we live in a default, you know, mono culture of consciousness, right? It's a mono phasic culture as the anthropologist Charles Loughlin has said in and we have to work to remember how to dream we have to work at remembering the beauty of that dreaming imaginal space and to incorporate that into our waking life. And so these little, these little cues, these little anchors are really powerful because they break that, that sort of trance hold, right that default Western awareness has has on us. So it is it's pretty, it's pretty cool how it has that disruptive effect almost
any other questions or comments before we begin?
Okay, great. So this is we're in the section of Lusa talisman where it's sort of very practical, almost like dreaming and sleep hygiene 101 kind of material, and it's a little bullet pointy. And so I'm going to breeze through it unless I have things to say about particular elements and and as always, if you have a question or something, please put it in the chat. And if I don't see it, when you write it, then I'll get to it kind of when I'm at the end of spiel. We don't have to wait for the end of the session to have any kind of discussion. We can really break it up. So I'm going to start I'm pretty sure that we finished reading the recall section last night and so I'm gonna start with sanctuary.
PAGE 36 So sanctuary. As you prepare for more vivid dreams, it's important to make sure you get good sleep. Without enough sleep. Not only will you have trouble with lucid dreaming, but also with feeling your best in the waking world. Now, most sleep doctors agree that we need somewhere between seven to nine hours of sleep a night. And if you want more dreams, you'll probably want to be on the higher end of this average. Keep in mind restful sleep is more than the time that you spend literally asleep. Relaxation plays a major role in the ease of falling asleep and staying asleep. Your general anxiety levels affect the integrity of your sleep. Where you sleep is the inner sanctum and it's a sanctuary from the troubles of the outside world. treat it that way by setting up your bedroom in a way that encourages relaxation. This is reflected not only in the physical setup of the room, but how you approach going to bed so to that end, I encourage you have to treat yourself well and get your z's. So here's 10 tips for your dream sanctuary. Number one, keep it dreamy. Reserve the use for your bedroom for relaxing or sleeping and for intimacy. So, you know we're not doing our taxes in the bedroom. Number two, dress for comfort, sleep and clean, loose clothing or nothing at all putting on your sleep clothes and hour before bed is another way of reinforcing your downward shift. It sends a message to others in the household to number three, keep it clean, fresh sheets, clean pillowcases and a neat room create a relaxing space. reducing clutter is also important for creating mental space for clear the air. If you can't get fresh air have some fresh flowers in a vase or aromatherapy diffuser, or small dream pillows stuffed with lavender or mugwort or other aromatic herbs. bad smells can actually increase the likelihood of negative emotions and dreams. Yeah, actually I can take talk about this for a second about there's some pretty good research behind how smells. What we smell affects the actual dream content that we have. There's some research that was done by some German clinicians maybe 1012 years ago they did a follow up study. They found the same results with a bigger cohort that and I think they they tested they had dreamers in a lab. They had them smell rotten eggs or roses and then had and then woke them up when they're dreaming and basically had them gauge their their emotionality was it was it positive, was it negative and kind of like on a sliding scale right? And they got very clear results that when people were had the you know, the rotten eggs smells close to them. And then they dreamed their emotions were more negative. The Dream content was more negative. They didn't smell. They didn't report smelling the smell into dreams, but it translated to negative emotions and then the inverse for the positive smell for the rose from emotionality was was basic, you know, more positive and they didn't report smelling it. They just reported better dreams. And so there's something special about smell. It's processed in the brain differently than our other senses. It's tied more to memory than our other senses. It's sort of our it's processed in in our sort of the oldest part of our brain in the you know the in the brainstem, I believe and so there is a kind of an archaic, you know, element to smell. So from an existential perspective, it's really important to have good smells around us and so yeah, I love aromatherapy for this very reason. Let's see where was I? Yes, number five shield the sounds so erratic sounds are the worst for sleep, right? So if you live near a busy street like I do, turn on a small fan or invest in a white noise machine or white noise app. Number six darkness rules. The bedroom should be dark and if you take naps, get some good light blocking curtains. And a latching door also creates feelings of safety in the evening hours. These days i i use a sleep mask as well. And so if you know when the sun comes up, I'm such a light sleeper. As soon as the sun is up, I wake up and I don't want to be awake so I put on a mask right and and I get my my additional 90 minutes that way
thanks Barry is sharing some really cool stuff from Jennifer dump hair. Oh nice. This is great. info. Thanks, Barry. Number seven, stay cool. The ideal temperature for sleeping is between 6872 degrees Fahrenheit or 20 to 22 degrees Celsius. The lowering of the body temperature is a further cue for the brain to release sleep inducing hormones. Mostly now talking about melatonin here. Taking a cool bath in the summer months is another refreshing way to get ready for bed it kind of like just it. You know unlocks something in us number eight wind down for an hour before you plan on being asleep. Create a ritual of winding down that incorporates relaxation, the dimming of the household lights, the shutting out of information, streaming texting, Doom scrolling, right. Read if you wish or listen to some relaxing music while you settle down with your dream journal. I know there's a sleep researcher who's who's really kicking this idea and developed it a lot. It's Michael Lewis, who's he's I think he's asleep. clinician and a board certified sleep psychologist. He calls it the power down hour and he basically splits it up into 20 minute segments. The first 20 minutes you take care of all the things that are going to make you worry, you know taking care of the next day packing lunches, setting that last email, whatever it is, you know is preparing for the day. Then moving in a second 20 minutes section to to your rituals to your bedtime rituals. So that's where the dimming of the lights comes in. That's where putting on your sleep close comes in it sends that cue right to your to your sleep partner your housemates or however you know, whatever situation you're in, hey, I'm winding down, you know. Brushing of teeth, of course all that kind of stuff. All the all the cleanliness, all the hygiene. And then the last 20 minutes is for is for moving into bed not to fall asleep but for relaxation. So you know incorporating relaxation into being in bed and just beginning to make that association and strengthening that association. And so, reading and listening to music and a little bit of like, you know, stretching if you're, you know, have a yoga practice. Of course you can do do a little bit of your work there. And so I really love that it's just in what it does is it's it's such a respectful way of moving to sleep and in in the benefits are huge. Not only do we fall asleep quicker when we do this process, but we have less awakenings in the middle of a night right and so so sleep latency is improved. We've get just this because relaxation carries through, you know, it's it's not it's unconscious, and it really does it's somatic and it carries through and we wake up more refreshed because of it. So let's see. Number nine, no blues. Rapid fire light in the blue spectrum may prevent the release of melatonin in the evening. So if you're using a mobile device at night, make sure to turn your screen towards light and the orange side of the spectrum. And so this is so easy these days with our with our smartphones, because I mean I'm an Apple user, it does it automatically. It's a setting I just just goes it goes into night mode. I believe Android has the settings as well. And so you can still Netflix and chill you know and and what's interesting is is that this research with with blue light and melatonin it's still kind of theoretical. It's not I wouldn't say it's 100% verified at this point. The funding has been difficult, I think for sleep researchers. But I think we have enough information that we know that this is probably true. And Number 10 make peace. Don't go to bed angry. If you tend to have your heart to heart conversations with a partner at night. Make a point to resolve the tension or make a date to continue the conversation the next day. So it's not an excuse to to be avoided. But it's important not to go to bed angry. We just don't sleep well. And our dreams are shit. So those are my 10 tips for your dream sanctuary. Looking at what very posted with these herbs mugwort produces complex, vivid dreams. Rose counteracts bad dreams is probably looking at the same research that that that I cited produces pleasant Sweet dreams. Lavender promotes sleep. Yeah, yeah so those are three three classic aromatics. So that's the bed that's the bedtime sanctuary treating our treating our self respecting our sanctuary for sleep is vital. It's it's really one on one stuff and it's also very easy to overlook because of the way you know just the way that we have perhaps been raised to to treat sleep, our culture of sleep. So miss shift gears and we're going to move into the next chapter which is called relaxation. And so this is de world stuff now. Relaxation be here now. The Lucid talisman which here's mine again. My old clunker verse first gen. The Lucid talisman cannot only help with being more lucid in your dreams but also in waking life. So let's extend these rules of the dream sanctuary into everyday life. The first step to waking life acidity is noticing when you're stressed. You can also wake up to your boredom to your restlessness, such as when you're waiting in line for a cup of coffee. Noticing your general mood and injecting lucidity is the first step towards a more lucid life. So when you're feeling bored or stressed, rather than pulling out your phone or checking social media, make contact with the lucid talisman. It's quite easy to do if you have it on a necklace or if you have the key ring version in your out in public and it's in your pocket. Touch the Tasman this course works with any of your dream ambulance, right it doesn't have to be that lucid talisman it can be your stone that you use for these purposes. So touch your talisman touch your amulet notice its contours let your fingers explore it. You know for the Taos min explore the bumpy scales of the snake and a spaciousness of the moon and the stars in the button like presence of the sun. The satisfying weight of the coin. And as you do this, take a deep breath in and think to yourself, I am here now. Exhale and notice your surroundings. Notice the posture of your body. Notice if you're clenching your jaw or if your tummy is sucked in. Let it out, straighten it up, relax and carry on. So it becomes what happens over time is just like with it using it for a reality. Check is it becomes an anchor for relaxation. And so when we touch our amulet, and we've anchored it with relaxation rituals like this, we can basically create kind of like a proof like in mathematics where you'll make the presence to your amulet and you'll have a relaxation response directly, even without having done the breath work. Because it's a cognitive habit. It shifts us between worlds. That's what we're doing here.
So I'm going to read about the 478 breath and if you want we can do this together right now. So if you have a minute and you aren't being watched too closely, because you're still online for coffee, try the 478 breath as a daily relaxation exercise. This is an example of yogic style breathing, popularized by Andrew Weil, long ago and the technique is simple. It takes less than a minute and it induces a relaxation response. The practice has an immediate effect on anxiety and on mood. So you can be standing but you might find it more relaxing to sit with your feet firmly planted on the floor and so we can move through this right now. If you're willing and able and you don't have to but if you're willing to enable you can do this with me and I'll guide you through this process. All verbalize it the first time and then we'll do it one more time after that. I don't want to do it too much because I don't want to start moving into light altered states in the middle of this reading. But that'll that'll get us going. So the first step is you exhale through your mouth, like making a loud sound like a whoosh. So I'm just going to read it through and then we're going to do it. First step, exhale through your mouth, making a loud noise. Next you inhale while you count to four. Then you hold your breath for the count of seven and then you exhale through the mouth again, making the whoosh sound while counting to eight. So 478 And then you can repeat this. Andrew Weil has just a three to four times can induce a relaxation response. And so, so we'll do this. exhale through your mouth. Inhale 1234 Hold your breath to 567 exhale 28678 It's hard to exhale for eight seconds, isn't it? Alright, I'm going to do it this time myself. And we'll go through it find your own rhythm. If I'm moving too fast
that's it. So, so if let me let me know if y'all want the instructions for this. I can we can send them over email or something or seven, eight. So the practice when you do it at bedtime. It really makes the cut. It really does. It makes a cut between before and after. And of course this is just like right the tip of the iceberg of of Eastern breeding practices. Andrew Weil, you know, has has, has he has he co opted it? No, no, but we know that this this comes out of Indian practices, and there's entire sciences around how long you hold the breath. How long you keep it postures, it's part of it. It's in part of the yogic practices. And so this is just a little taste of breathwork so you can do this practice anytime you need some mental clarity don't forget you can ground yourself with the talisman in your hand while you do the exercise. The practice can create a mental association between feeling relaxed and the talisman. So there we go. We're doing anchoring again. It feels like you're charging the talisman with relaxing energy, and then time when you spontaneously see the talisman you'll automatically feel more relaxed and emotionally spacious. So if you have a problem with getting to sleep, many people don't realize that the first step to sleep is relaxation. So if you combine the touch of a talisman with the 478 breath, or really any kind of breath work of this nature, do this when you're resting in that last 20 minutes. I would say before you go to sleep at night, just sit on the edge of your bed with your amulet in your hand and do the breath work. Then settle down to sleep into bed with your lucid dream intentions in mind. If you wake up in the middle of the night from a creepy dream, make contact with a talisman and then do the breath work again before settling down back to sleep. This can prevent you from slipping back into that same emotional dream landscape. And I don't know if you've ever experienced that but you know when you wake up from a bad dream and you fall right back you can fall right back into it because we're still in that emotional valence. And so breathwork shifts our emotionality it raises our energy levels. If we've had a nightmare, we're not going to be getting to sleep anyway for a little while and so doing a little breath work the danger of it keeping us awake. It's I think it's a it's worthwhile because I'd rather be awake and relaxed and awake and terrified. Some other practices for waking up from nightmares or going to the bathroom splashing water on your face, right and then other relaxation strategies to such as listening to music or picking up a book that you love that you've read maybe 100 times that you could recite and even Yeah, even watching some TV that that relaxes you, I've noticed recently and I'm I'm totally ashamed to admit this, but when I'm really stressed, I watch the show friends and I just do because I was a young adult when it you know when it came out the first time and it just, you know, I've seen it 100 times the laugh track calms me down. It's a terrible show. But it does a trick. So blue light with notwithstanding right. So so yeah, so that's so those are one on ones those are one on ones for Dream World stuff and one on ones for for relaxation and how that how a talisman can be used in incorporated into those practices. The next chapter is testing reality. And so here we're really moving into lucid dreaming tactics and how a talisman can be part of that so the lucid talisman is designed, first and foremost as a convenient tool for doing reality checks. This technique was created by the German psychologist Paul thoroughly in the 1960s. It was largely unknown in the English speaking world and to American Dream researchers Stephen LaBerge Shared Folders work years later. So what's a reality check? It's a habit that has these two steps. One ask yourself, Am I dreaming? To check for incongruent is to determine if you are in a dream? So you have to take the question seriously, because honestly, the waking world we call reality is really not that different than our sleeping dream is when it comes to perception. You know what we see? And how we think if you don't take the question seriously. You'll do the same thing. You'll just blow it off in the dream too. And you'll say of course this isn't a dream. My dog always has three heads. I can't tell you how many times I've blown off a lucid dream because I was like this is this is totally normal. So recommended practices. I recommend you keep the lucid Tasman in your pocket or displayed prominently where you frequently pass by it each day. If you have a necklace ambulate you'll see it in the mirror at least a few times a day when you go to the restroom. If you haven't done the key chain, that's probably the most practical of all because we're forced to look at our talisman when we're about to enter new social spaces when we unlock a door. No matter which version of the talisman you have every time you encounter it. Do a reality check. So this is the primary practice. For example, every time you put your hands in your pocket and you discover the lucid Tasmanian you can ask yourself if you're dreaming. But how do you actually test reality? This is the second part of the reality check and it's really crucial to get it right. You'll need a foolproof method for reality. Otherwise known as the waking life dream. Luckily, there are several things we can do that work consistently in waking life. That are more variable in the dream world. And let me preface this by saying that there really isn't I said foolproof in this but it's really not true. There's really no foolproof reality check. We've got to find the one that works for us most of the time. So number one and this is the one that I love the most. Hold your nose and now try to breathe. In awakened life you won't be able to, but in the dream you'll still be able to breathe because your real hand is still laying on a mattress. It's brilliant. It's really shocking when you're in a dream and you do this and you realize you can still breathe the second one is testing gravity do a little hop or jump. As an awakened life gravity's effects are consistent but in the dream sometimes you notice the difference. You might feel heavier than normal. Well, you might start to float. That said sometimes in a dream gravity is normal, and so you could get a false negative sometimes when you do that one. Also the testing the gravity one doesn't work so well if you're doing your reality checks like in social spaces because it's embarrassing. So another thought the next one is examine some text, read something nearby or look at a digital screen and now look away for a moment and then look back. in waking life the text is stable in a dream. The text often changes or will start acting weirdly. This is a really good one and it works for most people. There's something about what's interesting is is that in a dream when I look at text, and then I look away it's not the text is stable when I look at it, like I can read a text in a dream. I might not necessarily recall it upon awakening, but I can read it you know, but if I look away and then look back, it's changed. And so there's there's still some memory that it looks differently. And so our working memory is still operating in the lucid dream. Even though you know the dream itself is shifting. But I was on a call once. Not very long ago. I think it was back in the fall with Robert moss. Y'all know Robert moss Have you seen his work before? So Robert moss is probably one of the most mythologically
academically oriented dream workers that I know right now he his depth of knowledge is profound. And he's he started to argue with me as is his nature. And he said, you know, well I when I look at in text and my dreams, Ryan I can you know I read sonnets and then I bring them back to waking life. And so I'm not Robert moss and I can't do that. And so the text one works for me. So maybe one out of 1000 of us this method doesn't work, but it works for me. So next test your memory. Ask yourself, Where do you live? How did you get to this place? In dreams? These simple details can be hard to recall. So that's the clue to suspect you may be dreaming Gosh, I really love this effect. This whole effect really just reminds me about how important the concept of memory is to identity and how our identity shifts when we're in a dream. So if I'm lucid in a way or in a dream, I can remember perhaps my intention. What do I wanted to do I was gonna fly and then check out a castle or something. I can remember my intentions. But I can't remember my social security number. I've tried this. I can't sometimes remember my address like I can't even remember where I live. That's very interesting. Right then in one of the things that came out of early dream research, and I say early, I mean, really the 19 1970s 1980s and so not too long after scientists really even had any kind of funding to look at dreams as a scientific topic. Memory came up very early on. And the first sort of generation of dream researchers talked about how memory is deficient in dreams. Memory is deficient. It doesn't work like it doesn't wake in life. When you can really notice it when you ask yourself these kinds of questions. But I don't think that memory is deficient. I think that memory is different. And what's happening especially in REM sleep when most of our dreams remember dreams are coming from is that long term memory is exceptional. And we can really go down into essentially the first. You know the first 20 years if it's the most impactful moments of your life, it has to probably do with brain development. You know, the amelioration of the brain. What happens in the first 20 to 25 years of your life. Those are the years that we can remember very well in a dream. They just we can cut right to them. Why is that? And so I think that you know this, this and there's no answer to that. Question. That's literally why is that you know, the functional approaches to dreaming are still theories. There's not an overarching theory of why we dream and you know, what is its function number one function, how did it evolve? Is it important you know, from from that perspective, but from a limited perspective, from a cultural perspective, dreaming is about memory, right? Dreaming is about deep memory. And I would say that it's much bigger than that it's about ancestral memory. It's about routing. It's, it's about soul. So I don't think memory is deficient in dreams. I think our questions can be deficient.
Missy, let's go. One more aside, before I go on. There's a great reality check with the threshold. Let me see if I didn't write this one down. Let's like I didn't Oh, no, I did. We're just going to read. So here are some talisman based reality checks. And so these are taking the concept of reality checking and incorporating a amulet. Or talisman with it. So we designed to lose a talisman so you can do reality checks directly with it. So for example, you can spin the coin on a flat surface, and when it stops, does the talisman look the same? Right? You can use it like the use it's got text on it. You can see just the texts still say the same thing that it should say. You can hold the coin in your hands. You can read the text, you can flip it around. Right notice the figures notice the Latin characters notice because these things are easier to notice changes. Because it's slightly bizarre. In this bizarreness element is important. The bizarreness for, for lucid dreaming for infer memory is an element that the dream educator Tim post began writing about over 10 or 15 years ago. He is in the Netherlands and he's an educational psychologist these days. Check out YouTube for old Tim post videos if they're still around because his work is brilliant. And he really keyed into some of these into the cognitive and the memory aspects of lucid dreaming. So then there's the necklace based reality checks. So if you have have an amulet, right when you catch yourself absent mindedly touching the talisman around your neck, so you're sitting in traffic, or you're daydreaming at work, you can do a reality check. You can flip the townsmen over. Look at the sun side. Look at the moon side. Look at it in the bathroom. Mirror, making sure that it's still stable. In dreams this kind of action generally results in spontaneous new imagery. And you know things get kind of freaky around mirrors too. Right? So it's fun to do reality checks in bathrooms because you might wake up in the dream nearer mirror and then you get to like, look in a mirror and see what you look like or you can use the mirror as a portal and then go to go to a new scene. Okay, so social interactions, they can be profoundly triggering for lucid dreams. So when someone comments on your necklace, you can do a subtle reality check. And you can even engage with them. You can say Well, are we dreaming? And so I love that like we can we can make the questions social. And the more we talk about dreams, the more we're just reinforcing those the ability to recall our dreams and so anything you can do as a conversation piece, you know, especially if you're passionate about the topic, it's going to help with your recall. And of course you're spreading, you know, the good dreamy news. So keychain based reality checks. So if you've got your amulet on a keychain and you one of the best ones is to take your keys out of your pocket when you're opening a door. So take a moment when you're right there at the threshold when you're at the door and flip the talisman back and forth, you know and do your reality check and then maintain your lucidity as you walk through the door just as you opened it. This is a powerful place to maintain self awareness as thresholds are in between social constructs. They're effective locations to anchor that lucid mindset. These are spaces in between places, and they occur spontaneously in dreams too, and they result in lots of chances to become fully lucid in your dreams. And I think I talked about this maybe two times ago about how powerful it is. How memory and place are tied with one another and how a liminal zone like a threshold creates a dis continuity of consciousness. And so when you walk through your front door, notice how your notice how your consciousness shifts. Right notice like what did you leave behind? You know what comes with you. And so if you maintain lucidity as you go through the threshold, you're you're basically practicing a very cool dream skill, which is the which is just solidarity basically. And having been able to notice the changes that happened in your psychosocial environment
yet one more section of these reality checks, here's some more you can do. A reality check when you're opening the refrigerator door. I have a magnet version just for this but you can get a printout you know that says Am I dreaming? Put it on your refrigerator. It's a powerful place to be self aware because guess what? We're often on automatic when we're looking for food in the fridge. And I'm the worst of this. I'll open the fridge I'm just looking and then I realized whatever I'm looking for, it's not in here. I have to close the fridge because this is just what we do. We're emotions and eating are very intertwined. do a reality check. do a reality check when you're at work. Hang the amulet or the townsmen near your computer that you interact with many times a day. When you're looking in a mirror, do a reality check. Hang the talisman by the mirror when you catch yourself daydreaming at work, try to maintain a state of mind of the Daydream while looking at your talisman and do a reality check. This is how you anchor this dreamlike state with the questioning of that state. It's the perfect recipe for going lucid in your nighttime dreams. And so we're noticing our awareness the qualities of our awareness. We are discerning that it's is or is not consensual reality. We're sticking with it. So here's here's where the rubber hits the road. In the book they say for best results do five to 10 reality checks a day for at least a week. Now, you can easily add a zero to that, right? This is what you know, mystics and monks do they add a zero but we're not all living like monks and mystics. So start with five to 10 reality checks a day. Try it for a week. The habit bleeds into your dream life and soon you'll be doing reality checks in your dreams. This is what it means to keep your talisman active. So it just like I talked about last time with the with the lucid immersion method we when we pick up some kind of tactic like this, it's important to not just do it forever until we get burned out by it. You want to do it for five days, seven days or something and then stop and then just take note. Let yourself rest see what happens. Notice notice what happens with your dream life. Also to remember that dream delay is nine to 11 days long. And so you can do these lucid tactics. On week one. And then nine days later, you're going to be doing a reality check in your dream. Right? And so so be open to that that the timescale here is not immediate. And the dreams have this kind of weird thing where things go underground and then they come back up. Right? So we have day residue fried notice this stuff, right? It's like day one day residue. You experience something, especially something impactful or weird. It shows up in your dream, especially stressful social stuff. Day residue, days, nine to 11 a whole mess of other things come up. And so again, we have to slow down a little bit and kind of get out of this notion of like lucid dreaming is on demand. Lucid dreaming is something that's going to happen automatically if I do this. It's one to one. We've got to slow it down. And when we do our practices, we noticed them we take our notes and then we see if they work or not right and that's and that's really what's what's key otherwise, like why are we doing this in in how do we know what works right. So it's almost the top of the hour and I think it's a good time for me to stop here. And we could go into a little bit of discussion. Yeah, cuz the next section is sort of a whole new thing. So let's talk about reality checks or anything of that nature. And yeah, yeah. What works for you. I'll start off with that. Have you done reality checks before have they been effective in what did work
okay, let me get your muted Jerry.
Let's see Jerry.
All right. Love your show. Oh, I love it. You know, I've had lucid dreams, mostly in my my teens and 20s and then they you know, they dropped off over the years and I am so when I think that two years. But what I'd like to know is specifically about the tell us how many different forms or kinds of talismans can we get from your site or online? You know, there's the keychain one, there's the one you showed, but are there other forms of you know, bigger or smaller now forms that you can get?
Oh, yeah, thanks. So, so on my site, and lucid talisman.com There's, there's a keychain variety. It's small. There's a small necklace variety that has two different two different styles. And then there's the coin based one which is also in two different styles. And so one of them is the relic which is kind of more esoteric looking and and then the sort of the classic one has some blue enamel and it's you know, it's just a matter of personal style really like which one kind of calls to you. They both they both have the same functions they both have variations of Am I dreaming? Am I awake? You know, and they also both have the same Latin phrases on them as well which I think I go into later in the book but they're they're Latin versions of in my dreaming in my in my awake. And I think I still have some magnets left. Although, yeah. Oh, and we also have pins and so there is just like a, you know, a little like a little thing that goes right here that you can pin. I think that one's probably the most affordable one. And that one's nice. I like the pin because it can be again from like a conversation perspective. Like you can just put the pin on. And someone's like, oh, cool pin, you'd be like yeah, do you know what lucid dreaming is? And then you can just launch
Okay, thanks.
Yeah. You bet. You bet. Thanks for the question. I appreciate that. And I'm seeing Pauline has said that jumping has worked for me usually I float. That's cool. That's really cool. And that's how it is for me too. Usually is there's like a little bit of delay with the gravity like there's you know, sometimes I float and sometimes I just I slowly drift back down. And so there's you know, there's just a dis continuity there. It what's nice about that too, is that when I do a reality check like that and it ends with a jumping then I just want to fly in so it kind of it's almost like it Prime's the pump for a nice dream flight. I'm seeing another comment pushing my fingers through a solid object like a wall or door works 99% of the time. Oh, that's cool. That's cool. That's that one doesn't work for me. Right. So I have had lots of false negatives that way in dreams. Because when I first put my finger up against a wall or my hand up against a wall, it's extraordinarily firm and I have to keep it there for quite some time. Before it'll merge into the law. It's not immediate and so sometimes when I've been too hasty or if I'm too hasty with my with my thought processes, and sometimes I am right in a dream. I'll do the push and then I convince myself that I'm awake Same deal with a flicking of lights, by the way, which was popularized in the movie waking life, you know, when you flick a light switch, and it doesn't work in a dream because supposedly light doesn't come on or off on command and dreams. Well, I mean, sometimes it does. I've had lucid dreams, where I flipped the light switch and the light came on and I was like, Okay, I'm clearly awake. So not 100% on that one either
way what's interesting, you know, is that you know, you just kind of find the one that works for you and you're sort of style and dreaming because we've all kind of got our own baseline for like how kinesthetic are we have somatic are we how intellectual you know are you intellectually focused and the dream is a very cognitive. Like, I'm a very emotional dreamer. And so one of the ways I often become lucid is because I realize I'm really emotional, like kind of, it's uncalled for, and I'm like, why am I so angry? So that question for me, why am I so angry? is a reality check question for me. We all kind of have, you know, this is the this is the variations of personality that come through. And so you find your key find your tell
So, if you're if you haven't had had a lucid dream before or reality check as a process is new to you. I do think that it is a good primary skill. But I have to add this caveat, which is that the most recent research has shown that reality checking by itself, doesn't isn't the best for inducing lucid dreams. And so I think Catus debris in has shown this with some of his work and I think Daniel or locker has as well when they when they've been reviewing lucid induction strategies that you want to you want to cluster your reality checking with another practice for best results. And so still, it's not a bad habit to get into. But if you do this practice, and you're also tracking your dream signs, which is something we'll talk about next. Time, or if you didn't wake back to bed method. A cluster of lucid practices works best and that's really the kind of a key to the way I always taught lucid dreaming for at least for the last I guess. 10 years or so is that you pick a carefully selected number of practices and you do them for a little while and then you see what happens. And I'm seeing a question. Let's see. Why do you think that when we become lucid we tend to fly Yeah, so I think that our emotions, and I think it's, I think flying is a metaphor for for freedom, perhaps but something more than that for for ecstasy. There's something to flight as an experience. That is mean it's literally ungrounded we become untethered from the physical body from our limitations of our mind. We become expansive and our emotions, especially in early lucid dreams, when we're new to lucid dreaming, we have our first couple of lucid dreams. They're extraordinary. Right? There's this there's this this this flood, of of ecstasy of realizing that this is a dream and and we just start lifting off the ground in response to that. And so I think that it's a somatic emotional. What you call a cross modal metaphor, for it's an experience, it's just it is what it is. But what's interesting right is is that flight can be developed over time as a healing practice, and this is what shamans and healers use, to move in to gather new information and to enter new emotional landscapes and so it starts off is this kind of like, boom, it just happens. And then we develop other skills such like the ability to stay self aware for long enough for a dream flight to land somewhere, right, which is no small thing. And then the ability to stay open to the moment to what emerges, which is no small thing. And then the ability to remember what we are taught or what is given what is the gift that the dream gives us in terms of new information or insight or experience. And, and I think it's also in that sense, tied to animal transformation into moving into other kinds of dream bodies and other kinds of awarenesses it's somatic. It's yeah, yeah. And so we process information differently. The world looks different, and we learn more. So I think it's this wonderful birthright that we are sort of kind of moving into and I think it's the shallow end of a super deep pool. That is essentially the pool of shamanism. Not that it means that we're all shaman because we have a flight dream, but that we're in, we're in the pool. So yeah, that's the context that I would add to that. I'd love to fly in a dream. In also ended with this piece, just very briefly. I had to go through a process of learning how to stay put in my lucid dreams. That was a whole process for me, too. Because I was becoming defensively flying, I would defensively fly away from challenges. And so I was becoming flighty. And so for me, it was a process of not flying and sticking to the ground and in facing what shows up in those contexts. And so, you know, we're all on our own journeys, and we've got kind of our own revolutions going on. And yeah, what's best for you is different from what's best for me. And so these are just projections. But at all, you know, there might be a time when it's important not to fly. But to see what happens if we stay put
Dennis has his hand up.
Let me get him muted. Great. Yeah. Hi, Dennis.
All right. Thank you. I'm planning your presentation on this quite interesting. Now I'm, thank you. I began my exploration of this couple just a couple of years ago, and before that, I'd been someone who didn't remember my dreams. Had the occasional I wouldn't call them nightmares but certainly very excited. Some kind of activity in my dream that would wake me up in defensive mode. So I'm feel like I'm making some progress. I certainly remember snippets of my dream and so I guess my question to you is, and I'll describe this is this lucidity. Or is it just Oh, aware of a dream in a way that maybe others aren't? So I've had several dreams where description would be it's, I'm just as aware. It's just as it feels just like, you know, this daytime dream does. They're very short. There's a couple of them involved flying. One Envelop me, I want to put my hand partially through the wall. But these this last, I would assume several seconds and then there's been the occasional or I just have an image of someone very clear. But again, this lasts for a second or two. So my question is, are these lucidity dreams are they just dreams? Many people have and I'm just starting to experience them.
Yeah, that's good. And so I'm not sure. Number one. I'm not sure but what it sounds like to me that what you may be talking about at least for this short experience, that have a single image that comes forth that you I heard you say that, you know, an image goes forth and you know that, that you're viewing the image as this is happening. That you know, perhaps not thinking this is a dream. I'm dreaming but aware of awareness and aware that his image is here. That sounds like it may be hypnagogic lucidity. So it might be the kind of like it might be not a narrative style rendering, which we know those are the classic, classic dreams. That can go on and on and they have a even a story structure sometimes and but hypnagogic which happens on this sort of the book ends of sleep. And Jennifer don't care came up in the chat a little earlier her wonderful book is liminal dreaming. She really explores this aspect of dreams in great detail. And it can be developed and so most people go into hypnagogic or just a flash, or don't remember it at all. And it happens as we shift into sleep. But it's also stronger as Hypno Poppea. As we come out of sleep in we're kind of in a you know, a reverie and we can kind of slip in and out of a dream state as we're sort of laying in bed. It's a wonderful time to just be recalling a dream. And at the same time, images may show up float around hypnopompic can intense. Also be more bizarre for folks, as well as more emotional hypnagogia in the beginning of the night tends to be more erratic. But everyone's got their own personal style. Some people hear voices, some people see images, some people smell smells, I am a hypnagogic smeller sometimes, and so all wake up, wake up quote unquote like I'll be laying in bed, having emerged from a dream and I'll smell cigarette smoke, like very, very strongly, and it'll linger in it to the point where I would get up, sit up in bed and it'll fade away and I'm just like right so anyway, I'm pretty sure that that's my grandmother. That's gone gone for years now. But but you know, we have smells that come to us and we have as well as music. Some people get these wonderful musical orchestras that come to them. I've had that happen a few times. But it's not something that's happened often. So there's great variety in in these kinds of lucid moments. And I do think that they're lucid. You know, I think that for me, I'm a little looser with my definition of lucid dreaming. Yeah, that the standard definition is a dream in which you know, that you are dreaming will stop. But it's usually defined as that there's a narrative thought, I know that I'm in dreaming. But I think that sometimes we have a lucid dream in which we don't have that narrative style thought, but we know that we're in a dreaming landscape. We know that this is a mythological landscape. We know that the rules are different here. We know that. That I'm different here that I have powers here. That's a form of lucidity is appropriate. way of being the journeyman. So I include that, you know, in this sort of lucid nomenclature. So whatever you call it, I think it's cool. And the more you kind of pay attention to it, and especially if you pay attention to these these lingering thoughts as you wake up, you might be able to elongate it to gallop it Yeah. And that's something that some researchers have really noticed is that you can use it becomes its own skill to develop into massage it and so like, for instance, Jennifer dup here again, she goes into hypnagogic and she stays it for 40 minutes. She just took 40 minutes of hypnagogia. In she's developed it to to such an extent that she can have hypnagogic experiences and then she has a voice recorder that's that turns on automatically when she speaks and she can speak out loud what she's experiencing. It doesn't blink from dream, it doesn't get some reverie, right? It's reverie. It doesn't break the reverie and she's just his switches catalog which she's experiencing, but she doesn't remember it later. And so she records it and she goes back and listens to it and it's just this long, like collection of random. Is it random? I don't know. But you know, it's amazing. In a deeper spiritual level Freebox Iran who I know has come onto night club before I think you'll have a recording of her discussion for Rebbes work involving hypnagogic it became a spiritual practice for her is also a place for her for inspiration for her arc. And so lucid art came out of many of these experiences that are that are hypnagogic, in essence. So it's sort of it can be a very profound, a profound thing. So thanks for that, Dennis. I appreciate that. Does that Was that helpful?
Yes, it was quite helpful. Thank you, Ryan.
Nice to hear. Jerry, you've got your hand up again. Or is it from before? Is this a new question?
I think it's a new question. Let me unmute him.
Right now, the book I'm reading you know, at nighttime, like before I go to sleep. It's called The Art of dreaming. It's the ninth and last book in a nine book series by Carlos Castaneda us. Are you familiar with MRI? Have you read any of his works?
Yeah, so I think yeah, he comes up. I don't think I've read art of dreaming. That's the is that the fifth? He said? That's the last one. Is that the ninth? The ninth? No, I haven't read that one.
Yeah, I've read all of them sometimes several times, mostly years and years ago. I started in my 20s. But his last book is called The Art of dreaming. And it's amazing. Reading this and listening to you and saying, How am I playing? This just fits together? Oh, cool. That's cool. So I mean, you know, the thing is, Carlos Castaneda. If you read the books, what he says in the books probably never happened in the sense that he explains, because just think of it, you know, he was an anthropology student. And there'd be a lot of people who would read his books and want to go down and beat the SIAC end and called, you know, Don Juan made us and there have been articles written saying there's contradictions between the book and BNL. I think he did that personally to protect the people in the book, you know, it was like Dragna you know, the names have been changed to protect the innocent. And the important message there is that the exact time and the exact place but the underlying message, yeah, and I'm just wondering how you feel. What's your feeling about these boards?
Yeah. So So I, you know, burned through the first few of them as an undergraduate and really enjoyed them. I began losing interest when I got it just got progressively weirder for me. I wasn't ready for it. Perhaps I don't know the cosmic eggs. I don't at some point I just was like, I don't know what's happening. So but I love the first work especially which was derived from his dissertation in which reads more like an academic paper. And, and, you know, there's been lots of so I'm part of a society. There's a society I'm a part of, it's called society for the anthropology of consciousness. I've been a member for probably 15 years. A really eclectic group of humans that for a while disbanded their their meeting again, I haven't really been able to join the meeting since COVID. But they, as an organization formed because they were arguing over Carlos Castaneda. It was pretty much the impetus for the need for their meetings. It's a huge discussion for anthropologists. About like, Who is this guy, you know, he's so popular. It's he's transforming popular culture. He's even transforming academia. How much of its real? You know, Ralph Metzner gave a number of talks and essays about about this, I think at some point, I think Messner died a few years ago. And the thing is, is you're right, I think I just think you're right that there's there's truth in there. And there's some untruth and I think that he sort of fictionalized his life. But people who, who read his stuff have results and so I think that he, you know, was well studied in shamanism, and I think he did probably have a mentor. Probably not named Antoine. But, but I think that there's some truth. I think there's so yeah, for sure. He's a very clear he's a very charismatic figure and you know, you the new more you look into into his into his his life and how he lived in Ottawa. It'd be. It could be a really great HBO miniseries now honestly. He was a trickster of a guy who abused his power over his readers anyway, I could really get there was a dark side to him as well, you know, but there's always a dark side to artists, I think, well, not always but there was to this one. So we're gonna leave it at that. But he's powerful and you got me interested. I'll have to check that one out The Art of dreaming because I haven't read that one before.
That was this last book
Great, thanks for that Jerry. These are this is fun stuff. This is fun stuff. Any as call as call for comments and questions. We've got time if you're still here. Maybe there's a question or comment that that you'd like to make. When you can put it in the chat as well. If you if you feel more comfortable.
Seeing a common sense of smell in dreams. Yeah. Yeah. So I think I may have exhausted all of what I really know about that. Except to say that if we look at the sense of smell again as as, as deep memory then we can interpret the smells that we experience. St. hypnagogia like we interpret dreams and we can make a lucid dreamer. We can or an act of a dream or perhaps you can manage and CO create the smells and the sense that we bring into our life and help them focus and refine our consciousness. And so that's that's the two aspects of it that I think are are legit. It's not emerges spontaneously. And then notice what refines and works for you for creating a safe or comfortable environment and play with that and bring that into your dream life. A lot of these aromatherapy devices these days have timers and so you really the better ones. You can get them to click on and off and you can you can get it to time it so they're clicking on when you're in probably in a REM state. And so you can do a little bit of sort of dream sculpting in that in that way.
Thanks Barry's adding some good information to this is good stuff. Yeah, so mugwort you know, we have mugwort growing. It's considered a weed where I live in Philly. It grows in my front yard. And soon it's out right now. It's not budding. It's just you know, it's spring here. But soon the when the sun starts to bake in front yard is just going to be it's gonna be a butterfly paradise and it's going to just smell like mugwort and it's just this amazing, wonderful Seiji kind of aroma. And when you burn mugwort it kind of smells like pot. So be warned if that's not the effect you're trying to create for your neighbors but in its in its aromatic oily, it has a real minty kind of vibe to it. And in Yeah, it's not everybody's ally. You know, some people take it as a tea. It's got the same stuff in it. That is an absence, but to a much lesser degree. I think it probably increases the visual effects of hypnagogia much in the same way that other an eye origins do that are in that class. In the salvias, even though it's not technically a salvia. I think it has some of the same effects because of those aromatics. And so, a good people do mugwort tea ceremonies, right and then you drink the mug or tea and then you go to sleep. And so what's interesting is is that then your hypnagogia enlarges, it becomes becomes longer and you can have more visuals and things like that. And so that's where, you know, we're dreamwork and you know, the sort of, I would say the sacred plant medicine world kind of, you know, those two cultures for merge here in an Irish instance really. It's almost it's kind of a different culture of a sense. Which is why I like Jennifer dove hairs work so much because she you know, she takes her she goes to all these, like Burning Man and festivals like that and teaches lucid dreaming to a bunch of folks that are high on various substances and teaches them about lucid dreaming and you know, they're very receptive. They get it so, so mugwort is intense when you ingest it, but you can just keep it you can just keep it as a presence. You can just keep it like in a dream pillow and smell it and that sense so you can decide how close of a relationship you want with it. And, and I would say in general, maybe this is a concluding thought is that when it comes to things like using a nitrogens for dreaming purposes, start with befriending it and bringing it closer. Don't just stick it like a pill, but rather befriended and see if it works for you. See if you'd like its presence and if it likes you if it's a good match right. And I even say this, for Galantamine, which is comes out of the snow drop, right? You can there's Galantamine hydrobromide in daffodils. And so you can, if you want to see if Galantamine is your ally, you can go get a daffodil and put it in your bedroom and see how that works for you energetically like, are you you know, is there a kinship? How are your dreams, you know, in the presence of daffodil or in the presence of Snowdrop and then move to taking it into your body and, you know, in for Galantamine, so we move so fast to you know, making it a pill and boom, and then we're off. But they are plants in you know, this is one of the one of the oldest relationships that that we have within the natural world, right? Is is a sacred relationship with plants and the information and the perspectives that they bring us. So I think that I need to go for tonight. I love this discussion. I love these questions. And so your homework if you choose to accept it, and you're gonna be here next week is to try doing some reality checks. In this nature, find a reality check style that works for you. And see if you can anchor your reality check to a talisman in your day world and in your night world. And then let's see what happens. And then we can talk about it next week. See if anything happened.
Let me get everybody unmuted so they can say bye. Thank you, Ron. Thank you. Goodbye. I
