06-09-2011, 12:00 AM
LoneWolf wrote: Shifting your a.p. means that you have switched your perception from your original or fixed position to a new position. You cannot think about where the position is physically, you must feel it.
You must feel it and this feeling will get you there again, if you decide to go back afterwards. Feelings are what the body remembers. We have something like a feeling map . Through feelings you can get the best memory recall as well. This goes for real life as well as dream life.
Also there is something like a key in the dream. When you have the key you can get to that spot in the dream and dream from there again. Sometimes I got into the same dream like this even 3 times, or more – for example during times when I was waking up at night and wanted to continue with my dream (one can usually or often just fall asleep again and continue where one left off, but sometimes this is how I do it). This key can be anything. Can be a green ball, a person’s face, but usually it is something that gives you a specific feeling. And that is how this works. It is something special for you in the dream (it got your attention). I think these kinds of keys exist in real life as well. We just need to see them, but I do not yet know what function they could serve (or if they have another function) apart from also remembering the past, of course. For example we could have had a little toy as kids and once we remember how it made us feel we will start remembering other things connected to it. Or we can remember a bag somebody was holding on the street and while focusing on it we start to see the moment, we see the buildings the position of people that we did not even know that we took this all in. It is similar in the dream. If you are good at remembering these keys and their feelings, and have a good memory of the feeling, then you can even go into dreams that are older. This key as I call it can also be called a footprint.
Footprint is also a good name for this because it is as if we retraced our steps if we go to a point in the dream that we have actually passed already. As with the waking up example. I am at point E in some kind of chronology/plot of my dream, having passed A, B, C and D. This is not to say dreams are linear, I am just giving this as an example to show what I mean. So at this point E I wake up. I go to the toilet or whatever, fall back asleep using a key that I had at point D. I dream from point D and get to point G when something wakes me up. I look around and get back to my dream using the same key that worked for me before (because it is strongest or because I have not found another one further up the dream) and find myself again at point D. And again i go through points E, F although they might be slightly or significantly different, we might call them Ea and Fa. And if I wake up again I can fall back asleep again starting from the point D and again I can go with the previous plot or the plot shifts and is different and becomes Eb and Fb. I also used a further point at least in one case that I remember . But often I am just going for the strongest key I feel. Sometimes I even feel the parallel plots so to speak . I feel two actions going on at the same time I feel E,F and Ea, Fa happening parallel, like on two levels/dimensions. (You can imagine this is very hard to note in a dream diary, I usually don't bother ). I can decide to plunge myself into one of these lines more fully and keep the other just like a shadow, or I can just focus on one. Depends how much control of the dream state I have, but I often just go with what is more natural (more effortless), unless something specifically gets my attention and I want to focus on it. These dreams are usually not lucid dreams, I let the plot evolve as it will, but I kind of stalk the dreams anyway and often have a certain form of overlooking consciousness, taking notes and memos .
We can have footprints/keys like this for states that we know, have already experienced and this is how we can get back to them. In order to do this one needs to get pulled by the feeling (key) to that spot.
This is why it easier to get to recent dreams, to dreams that one has a more living feeling for.
Actually the example of the bag is real. I was dreaming and this bag got my attention. I was thinking why would I dream of a bag and then I realized this was a bag somebody was holding as they were passing me on the street in real waking life. I did not really put attention to that bag at that moment, but I remembered it because of the feeling, and it connected stuff. But why would I dream of a bag (was not special in any way, just a plastic bag of some brighter color) , well maybe to help learn this lesson. At one point incidents like this come together and one understands something. This is one thing I started to first do in dreaming and only later realized it applies to real life as well. The bag example is special in this way, I am generally talking about pure dream keys, just found in the dream. The bag was a key but not to get into the dream where I noticed it (or might have been I just was overwhelmed with the real life connection to try any other dreaming then), but to get to my memory of the real bag and the info in general. It was a lesson .
I do not know if this can help anyone really, I think it is the intent of wanting to continue the specific dream that got me to use the keys in the first place and after doing it a couple of times I realized the mechanics behind it. So the intent is surely most important, but sometimes when it is hard to get to the dream this helps. It acts a bit like a gate to that dream.
---(edit)---
some additional thoughts, specifications:
I say intent of wanting to continue helped me, and that is true. But even prior to that the thing that was helping me most to continue dreaming was the fact that I did not loose the dream feeling. I had this feeling from the dream/ of the dream itself (or the dream world) and it could easily pull me back to it (and then continue with other dreams after that). I could sleep forever. Not because I was tired, but because I could dream like this till I wanted. These dream feelings were pretty strong. It had downsides too. I might get to that in a more personal dream thread of mine. Do not want to clog the intent of this thread or lead it astray.
You must feel it and this feeling will get you there again, if you decide to go back afterwards. Feelings are what the body remembers. We have something like a feeling map . Through feelings you can get the best memory recall as well. This goes for real life as well as dream life.
Also there is something like a key in the dream. When you have the key you can get to that spot in the dream and dream from there again. Sometimes I got into the same dream like this even 3 times, or more – for example during times when I was waking up at night and wanted to continue with my dream (one can usually or often just fall asleep again and continue where one left off, but sometimes this is how I do it). This key can be anything. Can be a green ball, a person’s face, but usually it is something that gives you a specific feeling. And that is how this works. It is something special for you in the dream (it got your attention). I think these kinds of keys exist in real life as well. We just need to see them, but I do not yet know what function they could serve (or if they have another function) apart from also remembering the past, of course. For example we could have had a little toy as kids and once we remember how it made us feel we will start remembering other things connected to it. Or we can remember a bag somebody was holding on the street and while focusing on it we start to see the moment, we see the buildings the position of people that we did not even know that we took this all in. It is similar in the dream. If you are good at remembering these keys and their feelings, and have a good memory of the feeling, then you can even go into dreams that are older. This key as I call it can also be called a footprint.
Footprint is also a good name for this because it is as if we retraced our steps if we go to a point in the dream that we have actually passed already. As with the waking up example. I am at point E in some kind of chronology/plot of my dream, having passed A, B, C and D. This is not to say dreams are linear, I am just giving this as an example to show what I mean. So at this point E I wake up. I go to the toilet or whatever, fall back asleep using a key that I had at point D. I dream from point D and get to point G when something wakes me up. I look around and get back to my dream using the same key that worked for me before (because it is strongest or because I have not found another one further up the dream) and find myself again at point D. And again i go through points E, F although they might be slightly or significantly different, we might call them Ea and Fa. And if I wake up again I can fall back asleep again starting from the point D and again I can go with the previous plot or the plot shifts and is different and becomes Eb and Fb. I also used a further point at least in one case that I remember . But often I am just going for the strongest key I feel. Sometimes I even feel the parallel plots so to speak . I feel two actions going on at the same time I feel E,F and Ea, Fa happening parallel, like on two levels/dimensions. (You can imagine this is very hard to note in a dream diary, I usually don't bother ). I can decide to plunge myself into one of these lines more fully and keep the other just like a shadow, or I can just focus on one. Depends how much control of the dream state I have, but I often just go with what is more natural (more effortless), unless something specifically gets my attention and I want to focus on it. These dreams are usually not lucid dreams, I let the plot evolve as it will, but I kind of stalk the dreams anyway and often have a certain form of overlooking consciousness, taking notes and memos .
We can have footprints/keys like this for states that we know, have already experienced and this is how we can get back to them. In order to do this one needs to get pulled by the feeling (key) to that spot.
This is why it easier to get to recent dreams, to dreams that one has a more living feeling for.
Actually the example of the bag is real. I was dreaming and this bag got my attention. I was thinking why would I dream of a bag and then I realized this was a bag somebody was holding as they were passing me on the street in real waking life. I did not really put attention to that bag at that moment, but I remembered it because of the feeling, and it connected stuff. But why would I dream of a bag (was not special in any way, just a plastic bag of some brighter color) , well maybe to help learn this lesson. At one point incidents like this come together and one understands something. This is one thing I started to first do in dreaming and only later realized it applies to real life as well. The bag example is special in this way, I am generally talking about pure dream keys, just found in the dream. The bag was a key but not to get into the dream where I noticed it (or might have been I just was overwhelmed with the real life connection to try any other dreaming then), but to get to my memory of the real bag and the info in general. It was a lesson .
I do not know if this can help anyone really, I think it is the intent of wanting to continue the specific dream that got me to use the keys in the first place and after doing it a couple of times I realized the mechanics behind it. So the intent is surely most important, but sometimes when it is hard to get to the dream this helps. It acts a bit like a gate to that dream.
---(edit)---
some additional thoughts, specifications:
I say intent of wanting to continue helped me, and that is true. But even prior to that the thing that was helping me most to continue dreaming was the fact that I did not loose the dream feeling. I had this feeling from the dream/ of the dream itself (or the dream world) and it could easily pull me back to it (and then continue with other dreams after that). I could sleep forever. Not because I was tired, but because I could dream like this till I wanted. These dream feelings were pretty strong. It had downsides too. I might get to that in a more personal dream thread of mine. Do not want to clog the intent of this thread or lead it astray.