The art of dream control.
I actually found PerC after participating a few weeks at the
DreamViews community. Here, I stumbled across something extraordinary. I'm talking about total control - you feel as conscious as you do in real life, but the possibilities are obviously only limited by your imagination. This is called attaining "Lucidity".
We've all had it to some degree. You know when you're dreaming, and all of a sudden (while in the dream) you become more conscious - and this gives you semi control over it? Well imagine full, unlimited, conscious control - and you have Lucid Dreaming.
I dabbled in this for a few weeks, as I found it personally quite easy. I started out with the most difficult task, a WILD (Wake-Induced-Lucid-Dream), in which you trick your body to sleep, while your mind stays perfectly awake. Once this happens, you can create a dream (anything) and enter it fully conscious...it sounds crazy I know. I thought so too, until I gave it a try.
To do so, I simply sat in the office chair, and closed my eyes. In order to trick my body, I reversed my breathing - as I remembered my vocal coach commenting that the breathing technique we use to sing, is exactly how we used to breathe as toddlers, and also how we still breath while *asleep*. I stayed perfectly still, not moving a muscle (literally). Even when I became extremely uncomfortable in that position (the discomfort is an illusion - simply your body testing to see if the mind is awake - if it is, you'll shift position, and the body will not continue to shut down). So, the discomfort fades after a couple of minutes, and straight afterwards, the body shuts down. This was my first try, and it was (for me) quite scary. I entered sleep paralysis. This is normal, it happens every time you sleep, but you're just not aware of it (the paralysis prevents you from acting out your dreams in real life). It feels just like paralysis should lol, not a nice feeling - the body feels very prickly and immobile. Then slight vibrations (throughout your body) follow - another normal sleep function - shortly after I had a very bizarre "falling" sensation. Apparently, a few seconds after this, you enter a lucid dream (you simply create a scene in your imagination, then suddenly you're in it - totally conscious). However. a couple of minutes into the "vibrations" I began to have the feeling that I was being seperated...or tugged, away from my body. As if I were sliding out. I stopped absolutely immediately - opened my eyes and my body woke up.
I cannot explain what it felt like - you've got to experience it to know exactly what I mean - but as surely as I know when an insect bites a certain leg or when my hand is burning from hot water...I knew I was being separated from my physical body. And this, I have no intention of dabbling with.
10 minutes is all it took.
To me, the possibility of total dream control is very enticing - and apparently I've the capability to make it happen (at least the beginning stages). But I am not about to flirt with out of body experiences (which I firmly believed was a New Age nutter fabrication until now). Imo, the ramifications of this are very dangerous. Its not something to be toyed with.
Thoughts? Comments? If you really want, you can try it for yourself - tho I can't say this is very high on my recommendation list. But I do find the whole idea very intriguing.