Zeo: First Lucid Dreaming Practice

I have already described an idea of real-time meditation feedback. The realization and some of my personal experiences were shown in the “Meditation feedback: Am I doing this properly” article. This was intended to help inducing lucid dreams with the WILD (wake-initiated-lucid-dream) techniques.

Ideal Lucid Dreaming Induction Mask Description

Ideal Lucid Dreaming induction mask

The current idea, which is described in this article, is to help induce a DILD (dream-initiated-lucid-dream).

The idea is pretty much similar to WILD, but demands, in my opinion, less effort from the user. To do this, I use the same Zeo Sleep Manager, but with altered firmware that connects to a Windows PC with an altered ZeoScope client. My setup sends me voice commands when I’m falling asleep and the first images start appearing.

This sounds amazing and definitely requires less effort from the potential lucid dreamer, doesn’t it? All you have to do is to wear some kind of comfortable headband, go to bed, and the headband does the rest! It detects the REM sleep stage, waits until the stage goes deeper, and then sends prerecorded instructions by increasing the volume until it either wakes you up or you go lucid in your dream.

In theory, the device would be capable of detecting your awakening stage so it could turn off all annoying instructions when you are awakened and don’t need them. But this is the theory—so what about the practice?

Realization of Ideal Lucid Dreaming Induction Mask

As usual, real life is a little more complicated than theory. Of course, only rarely do implementations work as desired from the first trial. Tons of continuous, hard work is required to improve things and make them work better. Unfortunately, my case is no exception.

In 98% of cases, the recording just wakes me up. Maybe 16-bit sound was not a high enough recording quality? After a quick trial of connecting an iDevice with a 24-bit codec to the usual lucid dream mask, and having similar results, it seems the problem has nothing to do with the 16-bit quality. Another thing to investigate is normalizing the recording. This means, the recording has a lot of peaks in amplitude, which might be considered subconsciously as an alarm or wake-up command. You are welcome to post any of your opinions on this subject in the comments. I’d love to try any of several approaches that might lead us to success.

My Semi-Successful Experience with the Ideal Lucid Dreaming Induction Mask

As I mentioned before, 98% of cases have been considered failures so far. But 2% represents some kind of success. I heard voice instructions when I was dreaming, but my subconscious did some tricks and was again an obstacle, as usual.

Usually, I am able to turn off the repetitive, super-annoying voice prompts by pressing a button on a keyboard. But one night I couldn’t…

I tried to press different buttons, and picked up a laptop trying to figure out the problem. Nothing appeared to be working. It was getting really annoying, and I was becoming more and more angry. The more time I spent on a routine between dreams, the more awake I became, and the more time I needed to fall asleep again, which meant more obstacles. I was ready to smash it to the wall! Finally, I woke up. The whole thing was a dream. I was hearing my voice prompts the whole time. And everything was so real! I had never seen my room being so close to real in a dream!

So, the goal was achieved, and I was able to hear my voice for a while when I was dreaming. Unfortunately, I also failed several things: because of being ANGRY or being involved in the process too much, I couldn’t notice that I was dreaming, could I? It was so close to the actual reality, I’d say—it really was! But sometimes, you need a little anger or insistence if you wish to achieve a goal. Unfortunately, in real life, too much extra effort can convert to anger and we become blind and stupid, which prevents any goal from being achieved. Because of being too involved, I also forgot to do any RCs (reality checks).

Based on my experience, if you rely on a computer too much, as in the case of lucid dreaming, where you need to deal with your subconscious, you usually fail. First things first: you need to be able to explain, to another “you,” what you want to do.

Anyway, My Experiments Continue

You are welcome to leave your opinions about the subject in the comments section. Have you ever had such an experience? Do you have the states where you are so involved in reality that you forget about everything and make some unintentional mistakes? Do you regret it later? Do you consider this a problem? How do you overcome the problem?