I actually
I've been using a small dashboard widget for Mac OSx
called Countdown Calendar. It stays on my desktop and displays how many
days it has been since my last lucid dream. I am finding that this is
working to help me lucid dream more often and with more regularity. Sort
of like the old saying "Out of sight, Out of mind", but in this case it's
"In sight, In mind". I call it "the esrtul effect" (elephant stacking reaching
the usual limit). I had to change the java script a bit though. It was
showing "0 days until last lucid dream" which after I change the java coding
a bit now reads "0 days since last lucid dream". I have to use a program
called "Amnesty" for Max OSx to put it on my desktop permanently. Apple's
Dashboard does not do that natively yet.Pastel paintings set 121 is unusual. I wanted to use hypnagogic imagery to get 6 ideas in one hour so I could finish poster 11 immediately. So I lay down ready for bed fully intending to see more than a dozen ideas in the next hour. And it worked. I picked the best 6 ideas and was able to finish poster 11 next day like I wanted. I borrowed a trick I once used in lucid dreams (to see more meaningful paintings). I thought to myself, repeatedly, "I am thinking about things". and also, "I am thinking about thinking". I feel this turns the brain into a problem solving machine. Without this kick in the butt, my brain does nothing and shows me no answers or flashes of images. You can see the results, as the 6 pastels paintings in pastels set 121. and also at the bottom row of poster 2018.
I sleep anytime around the clock I feel sleepy. I used to fight to have lucid dreams. But when I forced one to happen it burned me out and I would have to rest off the task for a month untill I could feel the motivation to do it again. Now I don't bother too much with forcing them. When they happen they happen. It still works out to about one or two a month. The difference is just the calmness of the sea of effort. But I suspect you probably do have to force lucid dreaming when your first starting to learn them. When I become lucid I walk around in the dream searching for paintings. I'll see 10 sometimes or sometimes one or two and sometimes I even see hundreds of paintings in places like a gymnasium.
The usual kind of sleep where I have lucid dreams is sleep where I have returned back to bed for a little extra sleep after having been awake for some hours but still feel sleepy. Noon on a Saturday is typical. You should read this study by Stephen LaBerge's on napping. http://www.lucidity.com/NL63.RU.Naps.html
Here is a page of stats and charts I made to analize how often I have these lucid dreams where I see paintings.
The paintings are just paintings and do not do anything EXCEPT if I stop and look at one. If I look at a painting for more that 6 seconds or so it will always change before my eyes transforming or breaking into animation. I try to avoid this because it clouds my interpretation of its visual message. This is to say if the painting is suppose to be one thing originally, the oncoming alternative versions confuse my waking executions as I don't feel sure as to which versions I should be painting.
These paintings I see in lucid dreams are always anonymous. I don't know who made them. Which is to say there are never any dream characters standing near by saying "I made this". There are very often dream characters near by and I do talk to them but none of them has ever claimed to be the creator of such and such a painting. While I'm looking at them in a lucid dream I feel that the dream itself is the owner of the paintings. But after I'm awake I feel I have the right to claim credit for them.
The paintings are just all different sizes. Just the usual sizes and types you would see any where you would go in real life. Walk into any home, building or gallery in real life and you will basically see the kind of stuff I'm seeing in these lucid dreams.
I can't tell what technique they are painted in, whether they are oils or water colors or what ever. But I believe if I was interested in knowing this I could very easily look closer and come to such realizations if I wanted to. I just never felt interested in the mediums, only the ideas they were showing.
My memories of them are pretty good. But my artistic skill limits me. If your own skill was good enough you could show me what the Mona Lisa looks like. I'm sure your memory of it is good enough but most likely your skill is not. I have found a trend over the years though that lucky for me I seem to find paintings that are very close to my waking style. That is to say I think that as I developed a waking style of painting I started to see this very style in these lucid dream paintings. I believe this must be caused by an expectation effect. The same expectation effect that allows me to find rooms filled with hundreds of paintings is also showing me what I want to see in styles. This is fortunate because I am able to reproduce them better now. Years ago I was seeing all kinds of stuff quite beyond my primitive abilities but that never happens now.
A while back I discovered a new use for this expectation effect. When I found a painting I liked and after I spent a few seconds memorizing it, I then started looking for its title. I'd find its title sometimes above the painting, sometimes below the painting, and sometimes right on the painting somewhere. I've gave this practice up three years ago because I always found it very hard to decide between titling a painting by its what do I see happening in this painting description or it's witnessed text title. I stick to the what do I see happening in this painting descriptions now as titles.
I should tell you that I use a technique to help me called the MILD technique. It is explained in the lucid dreaming faq... (http://www.lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html) under the following heading - MNEMONIC INDUCTION OF LUCID DREAMS (MILD) TECHNIQUE.
I add my own words to the end of his "M.I.L.D." incubation statement though. Instead of just repeating his specified words, I add my own words as follows. "Next time I'm dreaming, I want to remember to recognize I'm dreaming and look at art." I don't add the words "and look for art" because I believe this would cause me to look "for" art instead of "at" art. I'm not sure if this is true or not.
Over the years I have been able to greatly increase the number of painting ideas I acquire from dreams by adding more and more tricks to my bag of tricks. One trick for example is I've discovered that if I don't see any paintings anywhere, one quick way to get one painting to appear is to imagine that my finger is a magic art gun. I think hard and point my finger at a blank wall then say and think "bang", as if I just shot the blank wall with my art gun finger. A painting will instantly appear no problem. This effectively breaks the ice and all the walls will now be filled with paintings for the rest of the dream.
On those occasions sometimes when every wall you look at has no art on it, use your finger as an imaginary art gun. Shoot the wall with an imaginary bang. Once a painting appears, every wall will start to have lots of paintings on them for the rest of the lucid dream. On those occasions sometimes when every painting you find seems pointless and not worth memorizing, "think about thinking" for a few moments then move on and look at the next painting. You'll see that all the previous paintings were uninteresting because you were not thinking about anything as you were looking at them. Ignore the lucid dream's details, fun, and drama so instead you get good at only looking at paintings and see the most paintings per year you can. After looking at a dozen or so paintings, if you see a good one, stop and memorize it for a few seconds, then keep moving to find some more paintings if you don't want to wake up. But if you do want to wake up with that good painting fresh in your memory, then stay there memorizing the painting until you wake up. The lack of stimulation from the lucid dream will wake you up. Another useful trick is that sometimes when I'm looking at a painting I like and I'm sure it is one I will indeed paint when I wake up, I will give it a title right there in the dream as I'm looking at it. Sometimes I can see two good paintings in a row and make up titles for them right there in the dream as I'm looking at them. This is good because it locks the ideas clearly in my memory and no matter what happens next in the dream I easily remember the paintings clearly when I wake up.
My favorite reality check for use within dreams is to try pushing the pointing finger of my right hand through the palm of my left hand. This works well because no mater where I am in a dream I always have hands.
After 14 years of doing this I have now figured out why sometimes I end up walking around in a lucid dream looking at hundreds of paintings and they all look pointless and unremarkable. It has to do with what I am thinking about as I am looking at the paintings. Here is how I discovered this. I was walking around looking at many paintings, all pointless. Then I thought to myself (based on years of critical thinking about the process of dreams) that since dreams are made up by my moment to moment thoughts and I am in control of choosing my next thought. All I have to do in order to see a good painting is decide what I want my next thought to be about. Well it worked. While still in the same lucid dream I chose an intresting topic to think about. I even said out loud as I was walking around in the dream."I am thinking about such and such". Then sure enough it worked. All the paintings I started finding were intresting and solely about my chosen topic. This means I should start having a lot more ideas per year to turn into paintings from now on. I imagine this process could work for commercial art designers as well. (two years later now) - I have come to now just calling this "thinking of thinking". When the paintings look pointless in a lucid dream, it is very easy now for me to remember that I just should "think of thinking". Not anything specific. Just the action of "thinking of thinking" is enough to turn the mind inward and proccess something.
