Ego Death Without Drugs: Lucid Dream & Astral Meditation Tips
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What is a lucid dream or astral projection?
A lucid dream is a dream in which you know that you are dreaming. When your awareness heightens, you gain more control over the dream, but concomitantly, you tend to begin waking up, so it’s difficult to achieve a balance where you have some time to utilize this mindspace effectively.
An astral projection is very similar to a lucid dream, but it’s accessed while in the transition from waking to sleep, rather than inside the dream itself. You exit your physical body and inhabit an astral body, which feels super new and sensational. Astral Projections often start in the room where your physical body is, rather than in a random dream location. But the entities you encounter in the astral projection are usually not the same as those in the physical plane, even if most things may look similar. You can learn more about astral projection by reading the CIA research on it.
Ready? First Step: Prepare for sleeping (after stealing underwear)
If you have trouble sleeping, check my sleep tips here.
2nd Step: ….
3rd Step: Profit. (Use Your Lucid Dream Wisely!)
Lucid dreaming is cool, but most people waste their time flying around or having sex in dreams. That’s cool also (unless you meet an entity that kills you in the real world, as happened to one friend of a friend in Thailand), but the real power of lucid dreams is that you can meditate like a real master, with no mind-imposed limits. Try connecting with your inner child or try unweaving into nibbana. Here is my original blog post on dream meditation.
Detailed Guide to Lucid Dream or Astral Project
You can find a lot of lucid dreaming tips online, but I will provide curated ones that have worked better for me and others. What does not work well for me is “reality testing,” where you switch a light switch to see if it works or you read a book. It doesn’t work because if I have enough awareness in the dream to think about reality testing, then I also have enough awareness to read a book in the dream or to turn a light switch on and see that a light really does go on. In fact, Buddha explained that life is like a dream, and you really cannot find anything that distinguishes waking life from a dream in general (only if comparing specific ones). I have even lived entire lives (and even millions of years) only to wake up from a “dream.”
What does work, as explained in this thread: if you wake up in the night, go back to sleep after meditating on breath until you reach a very serene and focused state. Works even better if you go back to sleep on a reclining chair. At this point you can experiment with the Vagal Blitz technique to pass into some very psychedelic sleep.
If you prefer trying to astral project, do the same meditation on breath to prepare for lucid dreaming, but then instead of lying down to go to sleep, remain seated upright and allow your head to fall forward when you can’t fight sleep anymore. As your head falls forward, you will wake up naturally. Then you will naturally fall asleep again and this cycle continues. Each time, you should gain a little bit more awareness during the transition into sleep, until you become aware of your energy body and are able to inhabit that instead of your physical body, and exit thru your navel chakra.
One strange feature of the astral projection is that you may observe your physical body after leaving it, and it may seem to be freaking out, like an animal without its owner. Calm it down and let it know you’ll be back shortly to avoid creating trauma you need to handle afterwards.
Supplements for Lucid Dreaming
There are various dream herbs that I have tried at this point... probably I've tried most that are on the market. Whatever you use to aid you, the main thing is to take the supplement at the right time. The time to take it is not before bed. Instead, wake up about 2-3 hours before you need to, take the supplement, then go back to sleep (especially effective if combined with the steps noted above before suppelements):
Galantamine is the main "cheat" (try 4mg), but it is a very powerful natural drug (from snow drop herb), and so I have also been looking for something a bit milder that would still be effective. Galantamine has a tolerance effect so I would only use it once per week. 5-HTP works well for many people, tho not for me.
Entada rheedii: So far, I had one good experience from rheedii extract. Other reviewers also mentioned they had their best experience with it the first time. But it depresses breathing, so it is a bit dangerous.
Sarsaparilla root bark: I had profoundly vivid, blissful dreams from multiple days of dosing an ethanol extract of this, with extreme sexual excitation upon awakening on the 3rd day as the "side effect." After that, no effect.
And one more for paid subscribers:
