Character Assisted Lucid Dreaming - CALD Part IV

Haha, As always, Mecha, you got it right on the spot. :stuck_out_tongue:

Welcome Petr!
It’s fine if the words come fluidly, all the better :stuck_out_tongue: As long as you don’t feel like it’s all just puppet play, it should work just fine :3~

Keep us updated, and thanks for posting! ^^~

I’m not quite sure, but I might have dreamed of Andy last night. Or at least it was some kind of furry. He didn’t try and get me lucid but we tried to figure out who was in front of who in the line we were in. He might be gay, but I could care less, it’s a dream after all.

Cool, ^^~ It’s nice to hear :smiley: It’s always nice seeing characters in dreams isn’t it?
Hope you learn all the more about him :3~

I’ve met some strange characters in my dreams, but I usually don’t develop connections with any of them. They’ll show up and play a part in one dream, but rarely show up in another, kind of like they’re an extra in an episode of a TV show.

Can someone give me a little advice on how to develop stronger relationships with my DCs so they might actually come back and I can get to know them?

Well, a tecnique you could use is try try and develop them in waking life :3
Try imagining them there to chat, and develop/ get to know them.
It would be harder to try and reach them without first being lucid, so you may want to try and form them while awake, you have easier access then–

So how I would handle it, would be to visualize how they look, sound, and what feeling they give off to me, then sort of just… Watch them move, see how they would be. Then perhaps trying to chat? Just try to get a feel for them, I guess :3~

If that was unclear just tell me! Then we can work more on this :3
~ Tal

As is usual, I’d have to agree with talon on this one. What I usually do is meditate and replay the dream, then call them and start chatting with them as they appear.

On another note, I can report a brief but uneventful first apperance of my character in a dream recently. Gettin closer.

Ah! Sorry! Late reply :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks for the support Wolven! ^^~ Congrats on the appearance!
I remember the first successful summon for my characters, and the first random appearances… XD Wow, exciting stuff :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s been a while since I posted an update on Lyra… The primary reason being that around August I decided it was better to leave her to her own devices. She’s off in one of my dreamscapes causing trouble, most likely. :razz: I thought about a lot of things from then until yesterday. The sentience of these “dream” entities, their “realness” (and I use the term loosely, since the reality of the world in which they exist is a debated subject, but it can at least be said that they have no physical form), and my pursuit of lucidity in general. I’ll be frank… When I turned Lyra loose, my dream recall and semi-frequent lucidity suddenly hit a brick wall. There’s something about having such an elaborate character that helped me with dreaming, even when she wasn’t telling me directly when I was in a dream.

So I kept small dream journals in those few months, slacking off quite a bit… XD Then I remembered CALD and decided to give it another go. I realize I could just bring Lyra back if I wanted to, but I feel like my perspective has changed too much since she was my lucid “assistant,” if you will - thus enters Shiya.

I didn’t have to think very much about this one; she just sort of came to me. She’s a feline humanoid (aka catgirl). I think red must be her favorite color… Because her hair, ears, eyes, tail, and clothes all have varying degrees of red in them! Her eyes and clothes are closer to pink, while those other details are more maroon. Her ears have these interesting black stripes on them… Her hair’s down to about the middle of her back, maybe a little shorter. She prefers to wear it down, but the way she’s always running around, I think she might want to consider otherwise. XD She likes fingerless gloves, too. I can barely picture her without them.

She’s gentle in nature… Like a warm snowflake, if that makes any sense. That doesn’t mean she’s relaxed or anything, though. She bounces around a lot. It’s an interesting contrast for me, since I’m laid back and quiet most of the time. Lyra was a lot more… calm and collected than Shiya is. I’m glad (but not surprised) to report that she’s already giving me subtle remarks here and there after less than a day. She giggled when my math professor told us he voted for Ralph Nader. :grin: She said something to me in a dream last night, but I’m vague on the details - I just recognized her voice. I’m not sure about her history yet. I’m sure it’ll come to me in pieces.

I’ll have Shiya say hello in the chat thread later. :content:

Oh wow, that’s fantastic to hear! :3 You definitely seem comfortable around the whole concept and connection of dreams and these forms of characters :3 I especially like your exploration into the idea of non-physical reality and their sentience. I feel CALD is good for at least that…

Personally, I grant that sentience can exist on a perfectly valid, though not nessicarily physical reality plane :3

Shiya sounds lovely! It’s great when they just kick off like that isn’t it? Ghost was like that too, hasn’t changed a mite since, either. It’d be fun if you and Shiya ran into Lyra hmm? ^^

I hope your efforts bring you something limitlessly rewarding, we look forward to your new update, that was great!

And hey, :3 New time you go lucid, why not try summoning characters? You wouldn’t believe what fun it is! But the difference may suprise you D:

~Happy Days!
~Tal

(P.s, I imagined Shiya’s colours, I love the warm colours, she seems so vibrant! Lovely :3 )

Last night was interesting.

I basically went from an average of one or two normal dreams a night to five, three of which had heavy lucid dreaming related content. It’s a wonder I didn’t catch on. :tongue:

I asked Shiya to help me recall my dreams last night, since putting too much responsibility on her shoulders right away seemed a little rude. She performed superbly. I think this calls for a reward of thought ice cream.

Anyway, I’m stepping it up for tonight; I’m going to have her remind me I’m dreaming and see how it goes. Given my previous success with Lyra, I won’t be at all surprised if I wake up with an LD to add to my journal.

Wow! It’s great to see your success :3 You’re definitely really productive :smiley: It’s great to hear!

Hey, y’know what? Do you have any tips that could be integrated into a CALD Faq? It’d be great to hear from other users to get various points of view, experiences, and tips you seem especially well off in this!

(On the LDing note, not as successful as I had hoped. :razz: Shiya’s feeling very apologetic this morning. But tonight’s a new opportunity!)

Hm… I’ve noticed that it’s actually possible to stress my characters out if I require them to do too many things too soon. It hasn’t happened with Shiya because I’ve been taking care to gently slide her into the role of “lucid assistant,” so to speak, but I remember I expected Lyra to induce lucidity right away. While it could have worked, Lyra didn’t enjoy being so heavily depended upon. She was always quiet in the mornings if I didn’t have a lucid dream.

I think you’ve said before that the character creation aspect of this is the crucial thing, and inducing LDs is more of a bonus; in my opinion, that’s really important. It’s easier for me to develop a character more intricately when I feel like I’m doing at least as much work to help with LDing as whichever character I’m using is. You don’t want to be like the guy in a high school science project who does 10% of the work but gets the same grade as everyone else, right? :wink:

I don’t know what else to say. :tongue: Working with Shiya will probably give me a different perspective on what I learned with Lyra’s help, though. I’ll let you know if anything comes to mind.

:smiley: Wow, very logical :3 I like that you’re compassionate for them, many just see them as puppets :C

It’s a great approach really, and good job with your progress so far! I’ll make note of your commentary and log it down :3 Thanks! And great work!

Hope you guys get there tonight!

Happy days :3
~Tal

First off, I’m glad I’m not the only one keeping dream characters XD
Whenever I tell people about it they say I’m crazy.

I keep a family including me as one of the members :happy:

Theres a total of 9 characters which of two is the most active
The first one is Desmond~ I had him for 4 -5 years
His practically very developed in the sense of his lineage and all that
He got blonde stylish hair and blue eyes XD
Very erm…manly o.o… he usually is the peace maker avoiding fights and is actually very very understanding

The second active character got to be the very funky, active,playful, annoying yet very handsome … Thunzar~!! (LOL)

Progress so far… hmm…

Not long ago Thunzar appeared in my dream and saved me from the collapsing building. It’s kinda nice and warm in his arms LOL…
PS: Desmond was saying I didn’t asked for him so his sad :sad:

Yesterday dream was practically a fused between them too o.o
There was a man with blonde and black hair… he is wearing Desmonds clothes too o.o That man was trying to kill something that was about to harm me so yeah… I can’t remember much…

This practically the two dreams with them in… I’m so going to get them appear more but they say even if they appear in my dream I won’t remember… kinda true based on the second dream… but they say once my holiday starts they are going to appear more XD

In my opinion they are really nice to talk to… they have actually helped me out in sad moments and gave me courage XD

So CALD actually work~
=D MY dream friends ROCKS XD

Good for you Kittymouse! :3 It’s really exciting to have characters show up huh? :3

I remember when I had my characters show up the first time :3 it was amazing! And I got a hug from one of my characters too :wink: You’re not alone.

It’s great to hear you’ve gotten something out of this! :3
Also-- I have 9 main characters as well :3 It’s nice we have much in common.

Keep us updated! It’s always cool to have new people :3

Happy lucids!
~Tal

Welcome Kittymouse! Hmm, I’ve never made physical contact with any of my characters before in my dreams. (and they’ve only appeared in dreams a handful of times in the last two years. ;-; ) I can totally relate to their ability to help out in tough circumstances though. Some time ago, our cat got involved in an accident and I had to put it down. I felt absolutely horrible afterward, but Saichania and Crysar helped me get through it. :hugs:

And yes, dream characters (or mind-characters as I call them) ROCK. :grin:

Mecha: This is something I’ve been meaning to post for a long time, but never got around to it until now. (I blame Tal and Kittymouse for reminding me this thread existed :tongue: ) It’s an account of Sai’s tumultuous early days, something I’ve referenced in the past, but never elaborated on.

Way back when I had first brought Saichania to life, she was incredibly antagonistic towards me and absolutely resented\was unnerved by\frightened of her ‘nonreality’ and the absolute control I potentially had over her thoughts, actions, her very existence even. For me, it was the turning point between thinking of mind-characters as merely tools or elaborate puppets and thinking of them as actual entities with their own thoughts, feelings and concerns. It also made me question the morality of what I was doing, as creating self-aware characters suddenly felt uncomfortably like playing god. I didn’t know what to do with Saichania, as she still resented and mistrusted me, and the constant conflict was starting to drain me emotionally. I couldn’t let things continue as they were, I had no idea how to help assuage her condition, and I couldn’t bring myself to simply erase her from being or forcibly re-mold her personality, not after my new perspective on things. Looking back on it, it was somewhat ironic that our troubled circumstances would be solved by another troubled circumstance IRL. I was really concerned about a family member at the time and I couldn’t deal with the emotional drain of both things at once, so I asked Sai if we could call a truce for the time being, at least until I was able to deal with it again. To my relief, she agreed to it. It was the first step towards mending the rift between us. In the coming days she mellowed considerably and even began to accept her state of reality somewhat. On my part, I promised her that I would never deliberately manipulate her thoughts or actions, or do anything to subvert her free-will, a promise I have extended to all my other mind-characters and kept to this day. (note: promising not to subvert free-will is not the same as passively allowing them free reign to do anything) This ‘Bill of Rights’ further eased the concerns she had and it wasn’t long before we actually became friends. Nowadays, Saichania is the mind-character ‘closest’ to me as well as the most active in day-to-day conversation. She is one of the most vibrant and kind people I have ever had the privilege of knowing.

It’s nice to hear of how you came to settle in with your characters, Mecha. Most people I’ve seen have to go through a period of meeting in the middle so to speak, and it’s amazing once you find out just how real they can be.

As for my part, I’ve always treated the spontaneous ones as separate spiritual/mental entities for as much as it’s worth, but when I first created Crystal, I had recently been reading about the problems Talon and TA were having so I told her right off the bat that I had made her so she knew that she was a creation and could deal with it up front. She just laughed at me and told me that I had a lot to learn. She has been the one that since then I’ve been the closest to, along with Foxy if you remember her from before I went inactive here. But I usually give them free reign to do what they will, as long as they don’t hurt any of the others. They occasionally will have problems (I have anywhere up to 20, so that’s a given), but they always manage to sort things out themselves, so I’ve never really regretted telling them they could do as they pleased. Just thought I’d put that out, because free reign isn’t such a bad thing for them so long as you can trust them. Even the ones I don’t know too well, Crystal along with a few others are enough to keep them from getting any dumb ideas, and they (we) get along well.

EDIT - Kittymouse! Nice to see you in the CALD topic! It’s nice to see that you get along well with your Characters. I find that people don’t understand the concept very well and tend to think we are crazy (which is why TA keeps stressing that we aren’t schizophrenic), and because of this the only people I really let on are my father and my broter, and my brother is the only one I really feel comfortable talking about it with.

Also, yeah, they can be very good to talk to, and I’ve had times where they were the only things that have kept me going and kept me from sliding into distructive habits. Why don’t you come join us in the Character Chats topic?

Mecha: Hmm, maybe I worded that the wrong way. I do trust my MCs very much and generally let them do whatever, but in the event any of them were to go off the deep end I would intervene.

It’s nice to hear how you guys interacted with your characters!
starting to get excited
Hehe let’s keep this topic alive~! :woo:

I learnt that Desmond seriously can be abit uh… I don’t know what word to describe it… :help:

Let’s just say he blames himself ALOT when I have even a very very slight bad dream (eg: Electric eels came snapping towards my legs) . He practically just sit there, cover his head in distress for the whole day o.o
He won’t listen even if I said it’s not his fault sigh It took me abit of time to talk him through that it WASN’T his fault at all. After he starts to feel better he will ask me for the whole time everytime I interact with them if I’ve really forgiven him…

I found out by chance that his eyes turns from sapphire to green when he gets overly emotional so it’s easy to tell if his really sad/happy. His eyes won’t fool me >:D
While that Thunzar…sigh…he continues to be a happy go lucky person even though his comrades is emoing in a corner =.="

This brings up another thing about Thunzar…

I don’t know HOW he sees things and I don’t know what happens in between but he started treating me as his girlfriend months ago o.o"

Whenever I kyaa-d to him about other guys in real he will get quite jealousy and
always says, “Remember it well, you ARE MINE” … he actually emphasized that o.o
Note that the relation thingy and speeches are solely by him and I did not made him say that lol X.X" Gee… I wonder how I’m going to survive with him in the future when I have a boyfriend in real life.

It’s kinda fun to see the changes in emotions in characters… most are just unpredictable :bored: Looks like I have alot of things to find out…

EDIT: Just wondering if you guys actually roams around with your characters in the planet you made them stay?
I know I do XD
Thunzar became a very very famous singer/actor, apart from that he actually attends Luna Academy, the same dream school as me only for students with what I call “powers” it’s kinda similar to the anima Gakuen Alice lol XD
I’ve changed school once along with him. First is Sakura High… I can’t stand his fans x.x
At last, I reached a school without people paying much attention to him! Muahaha no more screaming fans holding signboards saying “I <3 Thunzar”.
This also reminds me, I once broke the friendship between Thunzar and Dawn (his best friend somehow lol) not intentionally. She got jealous and set up a fan club in school specially for hating me (I must blame my mind for this kind of situation!)
Thunzar caught her red-handed one day when she was trying to warn me to stay away from him. All he say was,
“You better watch out, I don’t want to see you ever again Dawn!”
after that I got pulled along with him to the canteen where he sat there fuming… poof…friendship between them gone. Gee it makes me wonders why my mind put me through all these situations x.x
There was also one time when his co-actress, ( I forgot who, Thunzar forgotten who she is too since he claimed he work with WAAY too many girls =.:content:
JOINED Sakura High too… talk about suprise… the girls in the school actually supported them to be together lol and I can sense that the girl actually hoped that what happened in the movie they acted in happened to them in “real” too…she started sticking close to him even during breaks.
Thunzar rejected her though :meh:
After that off we go to the very peaceful Luna Academy where he bombs stuffs up…almost everytime.

Apart from that in the world they lived, I’m actually a very new “singer” too but of cause instead of soloing I went with three other dream characters. They are not part of my family though just some other girls not as developed and talk to only when we were together. One of them is a pair of twin Miu and Miyuki and last but not least Akira XD Apart form that, Thunzar somehow became our mentor -.-"
It’s amazing isn’t it… but Thunzar mostly skips our “lessons” and much prefer to treat us to ice cream instead.

It’s still fascinated me the different stuffs that can possibly happen when you are with your characters. I’m not sure what is going to happen tonight…

Gee I sure seems to have alot to tell o.o
All this have been hiding in me long enough. I’m glad there’s a place to let it all off, to share this little secret that people might think we are insane. Whew.