I know this is bad etiquette, but I’m going away for a while and will not be posting. I should return in about a month. In the mean time, perhaps you could brush up on some basic lucid dreaming techniques? Maybe read about what you can use lucid dreams for once you’re lucid? Or maybe even listen to some interviews with the famous out of body researcher Robert Monroe.

If you want more things to check out, take a look at “The Best of Dreaming to Infinity”

I shall return sometime around the end of July.

Good dreams everybody,

Hatter

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I ran across another great blog, one which I am really impressed with. Anmolmehta deals with meditation, enlightenment, and kundalini yoga. This witty and insightful blog deals with all aspects of meditation, and the author seems to be well versed in the subject. Here is the list of articles, a very long list indeed.

I think I’ll be practicing a few of these myself. This site is the best I’ve seen on these subjects, so I hope you too put some of this great information to use.

-Hatter

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The Lucid Plaza is another location that was created as a place for you to incubate. It was put forth that in order to incubate this environment more effectively, a type of 3D exploration of this location should be created. Luckily, Dreamport has a talented 3D modeler, Donoteat. He’s only been working on this for a few days, and it’s already looking great. The progress of the programming is a little harder to keep a tangible track of, but Ben says it’s coming along quickly as well. With any luck, you should be able to walk around the Lucid Plaza in under a few weeks. Here’s a few pictures of what he’s got so far:

(click the thumbnail for a full sized image)

These will probably be outdated soon at the rate that he’s going, so check the forum topic to keep up with the progress.

I’m looking forward to the completion of this project because when it is completed, it will be the most detailed and interactive dreamscape made for incubation that I know of. It will even surpass the lucid crossroads! I should probably mention that this is also where the shared dreaming attempts for the Dreamport party will be made. I hope it’s easy to get to!

-Hatter

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I have signed up for Odiogo podcasts. This nifty little feature allows you to listen to my posts, download the mp3’s of the spoken posts, and also subscribe to the feed of the mp3s. This might be useful for my longer posts, or for taking my articles with you on the go on your mp3 player. Or you might just want to listen to the posts while doing something else. Either way, I think it’s a useful feature, and it appears on all of my posts.

I hope you (my valued readers) find it useful.

-Hatter

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I recently became aware of a very interesting blog, Reality Shifter. She has many good articles about the same type of subject matter I typically cover, and right now she’s doing some very interesting and exciting experiments with Gamma brainwaves and their effect on a person.

“Research by the Division of Neuroscience at the University of Birmingham indicates that Gamma activity is related to perception and consciousness, as well as higher mental activity. Another research study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrated that Tibetan monks with 15 to 40 years of daily meditation practice exhibited much higher levels of Gamma activity not only while actively involved in certain forms of meditation but also while not meditating.”

I am very interested to see where this goes, as it could prove to be one of the most effective consciousness enhancing tools yet. While many of the brainwave frequencies such as alpha, beta, delta, and theta have been tested because of their appearance during sleep, the higher frequencies that represent the Gamma frequency have been relatively un-researched. This is another step to seeing what the brain is capable of doing.

-Hatter

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I was thinking about the subject of pain in dreams lately, and it appears that some people have it and don’t want it. (Well, why would you want it at all, right?) So I am going to share my method for removing pain from dreams. I have never had pain in my dreams, and never will. Would you like to know how?

Belief.

That all powerful part of dreams works here as well. When I originally started dreaming, I read everywhere that nobody experienced pain in dreams, and I looked back and I (luckily) had not experienced it thus far. This helped me form the belief that pain does not exist in dreams. Now I know otherwise, but I do know that for me it remains true because I want it to. The subjective nature of dreams helps this belief manifest as reality in the dream state.

While I may have removed pain, I have not removed anything else with my beliefs. (At least that I am aware of) So when I should experience pain, I usually get a substituted feeling. It ranges from mild discomfort to pressure, but it doesn’t hurt. Most of the time I simply get everything minus the pain. For instance, when I fell out of a car and rolled down a hill covered in blackberries, I could feel the thorns scratching me and I could feel myself bouncing down the side of the hill, but there was no pain.

How do I accomplish this pain free dream state?

If you already don’t have pain, then you’re set. If you do have it however, I would say the best way is to form the idea that you don’t want it there, so it won’t be there. Through affirmations, and maybe a little self hypnosis, you can make this belief manifest in dreams. Once you have that, it is really easy to maintain it, because it has proven itself. Just don’t doubt it as a fluke. You wanted pain to disappear, and it did. It won’t come back unless you doubt yourself, or actively invite it back.

Here’s to pain-free lucid dreaming!

-Hatter

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I found another interview with Robert Monroe.This interview is with about OBEs and is very in depth, about an hour and a half. This interview took place about a year before he died. (October 30, 1915-March 17, 1995)

In this interview he explains his very first experiences with OBEs, including the Monroe Institute, out of body research, and related topics.
Here is the other interview with Robert Monroe.

-Hatter

 Standard Podcast [93:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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A few days ago, I was lying in bed before school, hitting snooze on my alarm as I always do. It just so happened that I was in the middle of a REM cycle as well. I was still pretty tired, and I figured that I might as well try to do a WILD. What happened next was a great realization for me and I hope that the power of it can help you as well.

I laid down, and started to do the typical relaxation exercises before WILD. I wasn’t getting very far because of how unfocused I was, so I decided to try another form of WILD. I told myself that I would get up in 5 minutes and do a reality check. I laid there, waited, then got up and looked at the clock. It said 7:26. Disappointed, I decided to get up. I went to laundry room, and there was a giant pile of socks, about three feet tall. I was happy because I had been running short of socks. I went over and picked a pair up, and then started getting ready for the rest of the day.

Then I woke up for real. I looked at the clock, and it said 7:28. I realized that I had just effortlessly performed a successful transfer of consciousness from my normal waking state to the dream state. The reason I hadn’t realized it was a dream was due to what I have now realized to be my main stumbling block:
I never truly realized that dreams are as real as reality while you’re dreaming them. I always figured that I would know a dream from reality in the back of my mind, even though I told myself that I knew that idea.

I now realize the true point of reality checks. Sure they filter into your dreams, and raise your level of awareness, but without the crucial component of not knowing whether or not this is truly reality, they fail. Without the awareness of reality’s subjective nature, the point of reality checks is completely wasted!

Another lesson that this experience taught me was that even if you tell yourself something, you might still have doubts. I thought that I had internalized the idea that dreams are your reality while dreaming, but this experience obviously says otherwise. Extending this to the rest of my dreaming practice has some interesting implications:
My subconscious still doesn’t believe what I do.

What then can you do to get your subconscious to agree with your beliefs?

Obtain personal experiences, and not just book knowledge. The subconscious is rather hard to convince unless you seriously brainwash it with lots of hypnosis and affirmations. The subconscious likes to use personal experiences for forming beliefs. In my case, I’ve read many books and other material about lucid dreaming and related topics, but I still need to personally experience something to really “know” it. As Monroe said, before you experience something, the best you have is faith. After you try it for yourself, you have knowledge.

I guess that experience is still the best teacher.

-Hatter

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Big news in the lucid dreaming community! Dreamport has announced the next Shared Dreaming Party. Here is the most pertinent data:

Registration Deadline: Friday, June 22 2007
Shared Dreams Dates: Periodically between the above and below dates.
Expected Shared Dreaming Finale Date: Saturday, August 11 2007

At the moment the party is in the very beginning of the planning stages. This is a great time to jump in and help co-ordinate. The planning is taking place on the Dreamport forums, and unfortunately, you’ll have to register if you want to view or contribute to the planning. If you want to help with the planning, you’ll have to register. The good news is that registration is short, there is no validation email. I should also mention that this party is experimental, to my knowledge nothing on this scale has been accomplished before. This isn’t to say it wont’ be successful, just that it won’t be a free ride.

Now, here’s a little information about how the planning looks to be going thus far: (Nothing final, just the general ideas that have been floating around)

The method for training people to become lucid for the dream is looking like it’s going to be infinity. This will ensure everybody has the ability to lucid dream come the night of the party.

It has been suggested that we do several smaller and frequent parties leading up to the last party, which will be sort of a big bang to end the whole experiment.

The methods for getting everybody together are looking to be either having small groups who try to find each other and then the main group, or where everybody has two other people to “wake up” for the party. Which it will be is undecided, who knows, others will be suggested.

I hope to see you all there!

-Mad Hatter

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Today I’m bringing you a conversation with Robert Monroe, a famous out of body researcher. Founder of the Monroe Institute, he furthered OBE research in America and brought a lot more attention to the subject. He began having spontaneous out of body experiences in the early part of his life. From that point on, he was fascinated and worked to find out what these experiences were and what they meant.

This interview talks about his work with “Hemi-Sync,” a program he developed using binaural beats to synchronize the two hemispheres of the brain. It’s very long (over two hours), so you might want to download it for later.

Here is the other interview with Monroe.

-Hatter

 Interview with Monroe [146:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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