Waking dreams...literally

[Ðanisty]

I have been doing some study on narcolepsy lately because I believe I may have it. What I've found so far seems to confirm it, but I'll be seeing a neurologist soon to be sure and to try and get some treatment.

Narcolepsy is a disorder caused basically by a flaw in the sleep cycle. Narcoleptics can essentially fall right into REM sleep. Everyone's pretty familiar with the two most common symptoms of narcolepsy...excessive daytime sleepiness (which I have) and cataplexy (which I don't). Excessive daytime sleepiness occurs even when patients get enough sleep at night. Cataplexy is when you spontaneously lose voluntary muscle control...this is why narcoleptics often fall over. However, I found the other two symptoms (which I do have) to be much more interesting: sleep paralysis and vivid hallucinations, both occuring during the onset of sleep and/or upon awakening. During this sleep paralysis, the body is "dreaming" (as in, it's in REM) while the patient is actually conscious. This also makes it possible for a narcoleptic to take a 5 minute nap and have a dream, whereas most people have to go through the other cycles of sleep (lasting up to 100 minutes) before entering REM.

I figured that it's certainly a disadvantage at times to suffer from these symptoms, but I was wondering also if maybe there was a way to use this to my advantage. I've never been able to lucid dream, but this just seems like it's begging for me to do something magickal with it. Any suggestions on how I might go about using this disorder in a positive way?

[Kain]

Well, even though it seems I've been able to lucid dream rather easily, I've found that dreamworking is not really my kind of practice personally...there are some quite interesting ways to approach a situation like the one you describe though, Ðanisty.

I've experienced some of these symptoms myself during a period of my life a few years ago and I've noticed that this condition puts you in a rather advantageous possition for consciously working within a dream context. In a way it is much like a lucid dream in itself, but approached through consciously inducing the state through either meditational practices or through initiating a magickal working right after waking up (as the dream-like state of consciousness seems to function quite vividly while freshly awake from sleep, as you yourself described).

If working though such a state, you will notice that you have a much more intimate connection with subconscious traffic and also a lot more honed sensory perception, both towards physical and purely subtle input. Also, "restraints" of magickal workings usually experienced in an awake context are much lessened and often almost eliminated at those conditions. Evocation works most brilliantly too...so it's a really advantageous standpoint as far as consciousness is concerned, putting aside the practical side-effects such a condition brings about in daily life...

Kain

[Luciftias]

I have a good friend who is narcoleptic. She used to experience catalepsy, but after living with it for a long time and having various treatments, she pretty much just knows when she needs to sleep.

As far as being able to dream during a 5 minute nap, I don't think that it is a symptom of narcolepsy. I'm pretty sure that most people experience that. In fact, taking short naps in the day is a common method in both the East and West to help induce lucid dreaming. I find that I usually go right into a dream when napping in the day, and from lucid dreamers I've asked, they report the same. During night time sleep, the standard sleep cycle patten is typically in effect, however, I have noticed myself ocasionally entering a dream directly from a waking state at night too.

To take advantage of these symptoms you are experiencing, I would start up with the standard waking practices that make dream lucidity more likely. Not sure how familiar with them you are, but most of them work to establish daytime habits that will eventually work their way into your actions in dream - leading to lucidity. For example, several random tests throughout the day to sincerely check to see if you are dreaming or not. If you develop a habit of this, eventually you'll do it in a dream and find that yes, you are dreaming, and acheive lucidity. However, if you don't do it sincerely enough, you will find that when you do it in a dream, you will often find yourself falsely concluding that no, you are not dreaming. Sometimes it takes a while for habits to become ingrained enough to work their way into your dreams, so persistance is important. Magic isn't (always) easy. It takes dedication.

Luciftias

[Ðanisty]

I have a good friend who is narcoleptic. She used to experience catalepsy, but after living with it for a long time and having various treatments, she pretty much just knows when she needs to sleep.

As far as being able to dream during a 5 minute nap, I don't think that it is a symptom of narcolepsy. I'm pretty sure that most people experience that. In fact, taking short naps in the day is a common method in both the East and West to help induce lucid dreaming. I find that I usually go right into a dream when napping in the day, and from lucid dreamers I've asked, they report the same. During night time sleep, the standard sleep cycle patten is typically in effect, however, I have noticed myself ocasionally entering a dream directly from a waking state at night too.

To take advantage of these symptoms you are experiencing, I would start up with the standard waking practices that make dream lucidity more likely. Not sure how familiar with them you are, but most of them work to establish daytime habits that will eventually work their way into your actions in dream - leading to lucidity. For example, several random tests throughout the day to sincerely check to see if you are dreaming or not. If you develop a habit of this, eventually you'll do it in a dream and find that yes, you are dreaming, and acheive lucidity. However, if you don't do it sincerely enough, you will find that when you do it in a dream, you will often find yourself falsely concluding that no, you are not dreaming. Sometimes it takes a while for habits to become ingrained enough to work their way into your dreams, so persistance is important. Magic isn't (always) easy. It takes dedication.

LuciftiasNo doubt Luciftias that these symptoms aren't tied exclusively to narcolepsy and they aren't the only reason that I think I may suffer from narcolepsy. You're speaking of lucid dreaming a lot here. I would imagine that people who lucid dream do experience this waking dream state. However, I am not a lucid dreamer and yet still experiencing them. I'm thinking that narcolepsy may give me an advantage to learning lucid dreaming where I haven't been able to do it in the past. In fact, it may give all naroleptics this advantage...I doubt there has been a good study on it.

[Qaexl]

However, I found the other two symptoms (which I do have) to be much more interesting: sleep paralysis and vivid hallucinations, both occuring during the onset of sleep and/or upon awakening. During this sleep paralysis, the body is "dreaming" (as in, it's in REM) while the patient is actually conscious. This also makes it possible for a narcoleptic to take a 5 minute nap and have a dream, whereas most people have to go through the other cycles of sleep (lasting up to 100 minutes) before entering REM.

I usually get the waking dream when I'm sleep-deprived. However, there are occasions when this happens when I'm not sleep-deprived. In two recent cases, each time were the result of something I did:

* Using Ted Andrew's Seeing Aura eye exercises. In the book, there is a picture of a spiral; you change the shape of your eye so that an optical illusion appears, where the spiral pops out of the paper. Then you move it into the paper. The week I did this, five to ten minutes each day, I started getting more and more incidences of visual hallucination and better dream recall.

* Drawing mana into the eyeballs. When I feel it flow, I get an almost instant vision. Done long enough, I pass out and start dreaming.

Since I'm currently working on below-neck stuff (accumulating in the lower dantian rather than at the third eye), I havn't had much more chance to play with this.

I should add: I've always known this was the major goal of lucid dreaming. I remember reading one of the techniques for lucid dreaming ... you keep asking yourself "Am I dreaming?" so that you ask yourself during dreaming, and wake up in the dream. When I read that, a thought cross my mind: the stage after that is waking up dreaming during waking... being "lucid" all the time.

-Qaexl

[Marcus_]

* Using Ted Andrew's Seeing Aura eye exercises. In the book, there is a picture of a spiral; you change the shape of your eye so that an optical illusion appears, where the spiral pops out of the paper. Then you move it into the paper. The week I did this, five to ten minutes each day, I started getting more and more incidences of visual hallucination and better dream recall.

-Qaexl
Hello, old bean, could you spare a moment?

Would it be possible to post a copy of that picture, somehow?
:confused:

[Okazaki Castle]

Any suggestions on how I might go about using this disorder in a positive way?

Well... seeing as you ask... and seeing as it is only suggestions...

Perhaps you might want to look at past involvements with esoteric or magickal combats. Perhaps something that was slow to percolate thru, perhaps you made a motion which produced rapid results and seemed a 'victory' at the time, not realising all the time you were being 'set up' by a far more insiduous, magickally experienced and competent master, using the return motion of something that was not cared about to produce far more devastating effects...

Perhaps.

Now the way to deal with such a scenario if it did exist would be to send it back to sender. However, then you'd both soon be caught in a circle of 'send it back to each other', and that is not a cycle which you could profit from. Rather, the way out of it would be to send it back in such a way as to actually produce beneficial and pleasant circumstances for the original contender. The way ahead I would suggest there would be to take the symbolic area of 'needing to go to bed during the daytime', which is a valid perspective and 'return to sender' in a set of scenarios which revolve around a more active and pleasing sex life. Sitri is especially good in this field, as a consideration.

Then you can be open to receiving that back in turn, which is fun and pleasant, it must be said.

Take it as you will of course. So to speak...

all the best,
Okazaki.

[Ðanisty]

The sleep disorder is not a result of any esoteric action or reaction if that is what you're suggesting. The only person who has even been able to penetrate my dream to try an attack got a dose of their own medicine and trust me, they haven't come back for revenge. They're very much dead.

[Okazaki Castle]

Ah, so you too have killed? Kind of funny, how many of us there on this forum who disregard normal human laws, as being beneath us. Are you an aspect of Lucifer Danisty? Or his bride or smtg similar? If you feel like answering of course, won't pry if you don't want to say.

As regards the combat, fair enough if you say so, but given that you are involved in esoterics and then subsequently developed such a condition, would it not be logical to at least investigate in detail such a possibility? Or provide a solution to it, even if it is not the case, just in case it did exist?

Perhaps it's just my inherently strategic nature coming out: I look at everything from the persepctive of how to win in war and battle, and look at everything as a war or battle, of some sort. For now - will change to something else in due time no doubt...

all the best,
Oazaki.

[Ðanisty]

Ah, so you too have killed? Kind of funny, how many of us there on this forum who disregard normal human laws, as being beneath us. Are you an aspect of Lucifer Danisty? Or his bride or smtg similar? If you feel like answering of course, won't pry if you don't want to say.I see no reason to consider human laws when dealing with someone else who disregards human laws. That would be a very easy way to be taken advantage of. I also don't seen any reason to waste the advantage I have when dealing with "mundane" people. And yes, sometimes I do hurt people, but more often than not, it's with words.

As far as Lucifer is concerned, I am a theist, but I don't submit to anyone. There is not a "role" in my life that Lucifer hasn't filled at some point...brother, lover, comrade. It's a pretty complex relationship.

As regards the combat, fair enough if you say so, but given that you are involved in esoterics and then subsequently developed such a condition, would it not be logical to at least investigate in detail such a possibility? Or provide a solution to it, even if it is not the case, just in case it did exist?Ah, it's a miscommunication! I started developing the problem years before the incident in question. However, your logic is sound and I'm certainly willing to accept that the combat itself may have awakened something more, bringing this problem to a head.

Perhaps it's just my inherently strategic nature coming out: I look at everything from the persepctive of how to win in war and battle, and look at everything as a war or battle, of some sort. For now - will change to something else in due time no doubt...As someone who's been accused of having too strong of an "us or them" mentality, I can certainly appreciate where you're coming from here. These sorts of things aren't accidental and I don't accept any sort of action against me as coincidence.

[Okazaki Castle]

Ah, it's a miscommunication! I started developing the problem years before the incident in question. However, your logic is sound and I'm certainly willing to accept that the combat itself may have awakened something more, bringing this problem to a head.



Or perhaps a strategic perspective shift?;) Those are good for completeoy turning situations around, making what once might have been annoying, or a problem, easy or even an advanatage...

Have you ever considered Danisty how, if Lucifer's sister, bride and comrades are here in physical forms, pretending to be human-ish often, then Lucifer himself is prbbly also here, in physcial form, pretending to be human-ish often? If thise were to be the case, who would you suspect of being Lucifer? Or perhaps that role/consciousness is shared amongst a few?

Would dark wings be a key, one wonders... *looks at Lucian* ;) :laugh: :cool:

all the best,
Okazaki Castle.