When you try to juggle too many things it can slow your progress.
To jump directly from an awakened state into a lucid dream takes a while in the beginning and it’s partly because you’re concentrating on the wrong thing.
After speaking to a few people it’s clear where they went wrong. It’s where I went wrong too, so luckily I know how you can fix it. It’s not a major problem, but you need to stop doing it.
Focusing on your body is wrong
When you try to enter the trance state you’ll eventually feel strange sensations inside your body. You’ll never have experienced anything like it before. As your body gets more and more relaxed it will feel like it’s going numb.
You mess up when you focus on the numbness in your body. You use it as an indicator that what you’re doing is working, but this is a bad idea. I’m not saying your numb limbs aren’t a great sign things are working, but you shouldn’t pay any attention to them because they don’t matter.
Lucid dream meditation is different
Lucid dream meditation is all about becoming lucid. Who’d have thought it? That means you’re only interested in passing directly into a lucid dream. Even when you’re meditating at night and you don’t expect to pass into a dream you’re still trying to pass into a dream.
You’re trying to go as deeply as possible into the trance state all the time.
Forget about your body
That means you can completely ignore your body because you want all your awareness to be focused on what is going on inside your head.
- If you’re feeling heavy – you should ignore it
- If you’re limbs are numb – you should ignore it
- If your body is tingling – you should ignore it
- Anything else to do with your body – you should ignore it
When you’re focused on your body you’re actually harming your chances of becoming lucid. If your awareness is focused away from your body it greatly increases your chances of passing into the dream world. When you ignore your body it can easily drift off to sleep.
I don’t want to say it’s impossible to pass into the dream world when your awareness is focused on your body because it might not be, but based on my experience it’s easier to ignore it.
What you need to concentrate on
– You can focus your awareness onto the hypnagogic imagery inside the back of your eyelids.
– You can focus your awareness onto the sensations inside your head: this can be sinking, spinning, bobbing, swinging, pulses of relaxation, etc.
– You can focus your awareness onto the feelings at the back of your head, the air coming into your nostrils, the air coming in and out of your mouth, the sound of a mantra you’re reciting, etc.
Forget about everything physical
You just need to forget about every physical aspect of your body.
It does get more complicated (the neck is one area I’ll look at in more detail at a later date), so I’ll just leave you with the key takeaway I hope you gain from this article:
Don’t refer to your body when you’re trying to figure out if what you’re doing is working. Just concentrate on the non-physical things happening inside your head.
