My Path

Someone once asked me what helped me increase my dreaming capacity. Answering that question turned into this whole story. For me, dreaming capacity isn't a count of lucid dreams. It's how connected I am to my energy body, and how reliably I can get into dreaming with intent.

When it's strong, I feel "tightened up, energetic, and complete." When it fades, so does something essential. The good news is that it can be rebuilt.

Age 12: Finding my hands

My father introduced me to Carlos Castaneda's books when I was 12. One idea grabbed me right away: "finding your hands in dreaming."

"After a few weeks of trying this, I did indeed 'find my hands' in dreaming. This was a profound moment for my 12-year-old brain, becoming aware in a dream."

I dreamed often in the beginning, and after I came to truly believe, even more so. By 19 I had read every book on dreaming I could find. I didn't care about the author's belief system; I was interested in anything to do with awareness in the dream state.

The sleep paralysis years

Then for a few months I began waking up paralyzed nearly every time I went to sleep. "Every time I went to sleep, I found myself paralyzed, yet conscious. It was terrifying." In time I learned to move away from my paralyzed body and enter dreams directly from paralysis, which became one of my most useful skills. What started out terrifying turned into a doorway, and I came to love it. I wish I had it more. My perception never fully went back, though. I still see static-like particles and dancing lights everywhere (visual snow), and that later became the raw material for my practice.

If you're dealing with sleep paralysis, start with the About page. It's common, it's usually harmless, and fear makes it worse. It can even become a way in.

Peak capacity: when my dreaming took off

When I completed a thorough recapitulation at 20, my dreaming took off. Over the following decades I went into dreaming so many times I can't recall all of it, often 20 to 30 times a month. I have many recorded experiences. When I read them the memory sometimes resurfaces. Other times, it is as if I am reading a story about myself that I did not experience.

Losing it

When Castaneda left the world, I began a frantic search for any source like him. Others offered only pieces, pale echoes of his thorough explanation. My beliefs began to waver.

"Over the next years, albeit slowly, my dreaming began to dissipate. It slowed to a crawl of maybe one or two dreaming experiences a year."

The numbers weren't the worst part. "The bad part was that I knew I was losing something of tremendous value." The bird of freedom was passing me by. I had lost my resolve; my core beliefs were gone.

The last thread: the purple dreaming color

One thing never left: the purple color I'd always seen at the edge of dreaming. It was always there when I called it.

"The energy body never left me. I had left it; I was disconnected. That scintillating purplish blob was the last thread."

I started looking for it every night and got so good at finding it that I can do it anywhere, even awake in broad daylight. "Mere seconds of silence and calling intent and it is there." But I could call it and gaze into it, and it just wouldn't pull me into dreaming like it used to. I had a deeper issue. So I shed my skin: I set out to build new core beliefs and take apart the ones that weren't getting me anywhere. That work became Phosphene Gaze.

Hypnagogia opens the door

I've always had intense hypnagogic imagery. What I didn't realize was that the state itself could be held. Another hypnagogia explorer's work opened my eyes to maintaining it for long stretches, up to 90 minutes at a time, watching imagery form and staying present with it. That reopened a door I thought had closed, and all of my hypnagogic work is built on those techniques. That's the heart of Hypnagogic Exploration.

Inner silence: rebuilding the foundation

Then I settled into a practice of sitting still, stopping the internal dialogue, and witnessing. In silence, the particle screen (that field of multicolored dots I always see, even awake, likely my visual snow) became my mainstay and my anchor. It involves no sleep at all.

"This in-between state, call it 'Chair Silence,' 'Passive Witnessing,' or 'Liminal dreaming,' became my outlet. I don't care what it is called to be honest. It's something that gives results."

For five years I practiced daily, in sessions of 30 to 90 minutes, focused on re-forging my energy body into a capable unit as it used to be. At first I had maybe one experience every two months of going straight from silence into dreaming without losing awareness. Over time I was dreaming again two to four times a month. "Doing it from a waking state with fully focused intent, now that was something."

It was also a whole path on its own. Even without entering dreaming, it declutters debris as you dive into the structure of self. I relived memories as full scenes for the first time, as if I were literally there.

"Energy, silence, and intent are the new cornerstones."

It is proven by doing, not by beliefs. That's why Inner Silence is the first page under Techniques.

Timing: waking up with intent

One thing had always bothered me about my early notes: how easy dreaming sometimes was. "It was almost as if it was more a matter of impeccable timing than anything else." Many of those easy entries happened right as I woke up. It's the opposite of my silence practice, which enters dreaming from a waking state with no lapse in awareness.

So I tried it for a month and entered dreaming about 22 times, which to me proved the theory. "Dreaming is as simple as waking up with intent." That became Waking With Intent, and its companion, Tactile Cohesion, for making the dream solid once I'm in.

LucidMe

Later the LucidMe mask came along and floored me, even after four decades of dreaming. It's a key piece of my practice now, though my other methods still give different kinds of results. You can read the whole story in the LucidMe review.

Disclosure: I bought my LucidMe myself and have no affiliation with REMspace.

Where my capacity stands now

In the end I reached a point where I didn't even care whether I dreamed, because my silence practice was a path in itself. Today I can enter dreaming when I set my intent to, and spontaneous dreams still show up on their own.

"My energetic layers have tightened back up, so to speak."

The long-term goal, if I were still obsessed, would be to enter dreaming on every natural awakening. I know that's possible, but I'm not greedy. I log my nights and share them in The Lab.

Next: waking energy perception

My next step is exploring energy perception while awake, the perceptual quirks I've developed over the years that have begun to demand my attention. It feels like a new beginning. It's not over until the final day.

Want to compare paths? Share yours in the forum. And please read About before trying anything here. This is personal practice, not medical advice.