Character Assisted Lucid Dreaming...CALD part IX

FAQ’s
If you’ve made it this far then you can see that CALD is a complicated technique that is very different for each person. This section covers some of the questions I’ve had since starting with this technique and I’ll try to answer them as best I can. If you can think of an issue I’ve missed then post it and I’ll see if I can add it.

Q: I don’t know what my character should be like.
A: Check out some of the characters created by other forum members. There might be some more links here but for now it’s just my character. Nova

Q: Can I talk to my character about the fact they are just a character?
A: Of course you can, there is no need to hide anything from them. It is probably for the best that your character knows what they are.

Q: My character is perfect/a Mary Sue. Is this bad?
A: Not at all. Your character can be as flawed or as perfect as you want them to be. Since they exist only inside your mind then it doesn’t matter how perfect they are. Would you rather spend time with an ideal character or one who has flaws just so they can have flaws. Unlike writing no one else is going to judge your character.

Q: Can I have more than one character?
A: You can have as many characters as you like. The more you have the more work you’ll need to put in to maintain them all. Before creating a new character take some time to decide if having a new character will help you.

Q: What else can I use my character for?
A: Anything you can think of. Talking with your character can help you to sort out your thoughts or troubles. You can use your character as inspiration when doing anything creative (arts, writing etc). Or you can ask them for their opposition on things. Your character can be as useful in everyday life as you want them to be.

Q: Can my character disappear or die?
A: Yes. Sometimes character’s may leave and disappear into the world you created for them. This could be completely unannounced or they might let you know well before they do. If you don’t want them to go then tell them. You could also go looking for them in a dream. A character can only die if you believe they can and if it does happen it’ll probably happen in a dream. You could avoid this all together by making your character an immortal. If somehow your character is killed then you could try bringing them back to life during a dream or asking another character to do it for you.

Q: Should I talk to my character more often?
A: It doesn’t matter how much you talk to your character. Some people will only talk to their character when they are in bed. Others will have their character go everywhere with them. You can make your character as intrusive or as passive in your life as you like.

Q: My character is a yes man and agrees completely with everything I say. Is that bad?
A: It’s only bad if you want it to be. Because your character is a part of your mind then it is understandable they feel the same way about things. Creating conflict between yourself and your character can be a double edged sword. If you force conflict in opinion simply for the sake of doing so then you’ll notice and end up getting no where. If you really want to disagree on something then try and find issues you don’t have a strong opinion for and give your character the opposing one. This can be a good way to build your character but be careful you don’t create a monster.

Q: Does CALD have anything to do with schizophrenia?
A: This thought is probably why some people avoid CALD all together. Generally society defines anyone who talks to voices in their heads as crazy people which is fair enough. The biggest and most important difference between someone who suffers a condition like schizophrenia and someone who uses CALD is clear to see. The person using CALD understands that the voices aren’t real. So long as you don’t talk to your character out loud in a public place then you’ll have no problems and so long as you remember your character is only a character for helping with lucid dreaming then you’ll remain as sane as you were before you started.
You might also find that by having a character you become more aware of yourself and who you are. Spending time inside your head and separating your thoughts to personify your character in real time can help you to better understand yourself and your feelings.

Q: You missed X topic. Are you ever going to add it? Because I think it’s really important.
A: Let me know! Post on the thread and we’ll talk about it. CALD is a complex technique and there is always more to learn and more things to consider.

Bonus:
I’d like to add some ideas here for people who want unique characters. If you have an idea for a character but don’t have room for more, or just haven’t gotten around to creating them yet then share your idea on the thread. If your idea is fun or unique I can add it here.

Give an object a personality: Do you have a favorite necklace or a watch you always wear? Give it a voice. Take it with you everywhere and if it suddenly begins talking then you are probably dreaming.

Create an AI. You can create a character that inhabits technology. It sits on your taskbar and gives your computer a personality. It can also upload itself to portable devices so you can take it with you wherever you go. It also gives you someone to blame when your computer crashes.

Create a “deity” or “being of great power”. Your character can be the ruler of your dream world. Other dream characters bow down to their presence and they have the power to manipulate the dream world. They can shoot lightning from their hands and most importantly they can find you and tell you you’re dreaming.

This post is for describing my character so I can link it to the CALD guide. If you want to tell us about your character(s) in detail then follow a similar format to this post and I can add your character to the examples.

My character is Nova. He’s a thirteen or fourteen year old boy created to help me have lucid dreams. In creating him I choose several traits and ideas that would make him the perfect CALD character for me. I made his personality endearing, he puts a lot of effort into the things he does. I made him innocent and gentle, which would make him easy to work with and I gave him the body to match.
Originally he had blond hair and blue eyes. His clothing was poorly defined and nothing really stuck. So I looked to pictures of real people for inspiration. It wasn’t even an hour after I first came up with him that I stumbled upon an image of a boy. Nova became that boy, brown hair and brown eyes with a fleecy green hoodie and a goofy grin. After that Nova became incredibly easy for me to visualize and it became a lot easier to talk to him.
His background is non existent. I decided not to make up a fictional background for him so as far as he was concerned he was simply a character created to help me with CALD. He didn’t have a problem with that at all and we haven’t looked back since.
His name comes from a slightly similar character I created some time before that I planned to use in a short story. I never wrote the story so the character remained hollow. I gave Nova the powers this character had, the power to control fire. For the first few weeks Nova flaunted his fire powers all the time. Since then they have expanded to control over everything. While he still uses fire at times he can walk through walls, sink into floors and summon objects just by thinking it. If it can be visualized then he can do it.
Nova was “born” on the 16th of May 2012 and I regret nothing about the decision. Between then and now I have had seven short lucid dreams including my first one and my dream recall has never been better. I have learned so much about myself and the way I think and now I have a new buddy whenever I need someone to talk to.

I just hope that by writing this guide I can help someone else to achieve a lucid dream or perhaps learn something about themselves they might never have considered before.

Wow, CyberD!
I’m new to this method and to read this really helped me a lot in understanding what its about and how to become lucid with it! Thank you for that!
Maybe its just me, but I …um…dont want to talk to someone who isn’t there. It just feels crazy for me, and I am afraid of what the others could think of me if they noticed I did. Did you have similar doubts? How did you overcome them?
Thanks again!

@Hillatoppa: You don’t have to talk out loud with your character. Just picture you and your character together in your mind and imagine everything both of you are saying. It’s kind of like daydreaming. Nobody except you and your character will notice… unless they’re a mind-reader, of course!

You could also check out the Character Chats thread in the Playground subforum if you’d like an opportunity for your character to interact with other people’s characters.

Thank you fennecgirl, sounds good. I didnt understand the talking thing before…
this really IS interesting. maybe I try this method out!
Another question: Do you write down the personality/outfit details or do you just remember them?

I just remember them, but you can write it all down if you think that’ll help you remember better.

Hi Hillatoppa. Good questions. For the first one yes, of course you feel crazy when you start, you’d probably be crazy if you didn’t feel crazy. Firstly as fennecgirl said you don’t actually have to talk out loud. It’s all inside your head and that’s where it’ll stay. If you’re having trouble coming up with your character or remembering them then write everything down. Treat it like you’re writing a character for a story, write everything down and make changes if you don’t like it.
You can also talk to your character through writing. In this case CALD becomes very similar to roleplaying, except that you are roleplaying both of the characters (being you and your character) by starting like this you might get more comfortable with the technique. Hopefully that helps somewhat, if not then give it a day or two and then try again.

Thanks for your reply, CyberD.
I think I will give it a try soon. Dont have too much time right now.
Again, thanks for this brilliant method description!
Have an awesome night!

Well, I’m going to try this
And I already have some sort of personality in mind…

Is it a problem my character becomes some sort of minion/servant.
Id like to have a firm grasp on what he does and make sure he will not disobey me.
Then again: I feel sorry for him being a slave, a servant.
Would it be possible to ‘implant’ the need to serve me when I ‘create’ him without
him realising hes just a servant.
Example: Make following my commands his greatest joy instead of just calling him a servant. Forcing him to always help me in lucid dreams without him realising it isnt his decision…

Perhaps I’m making this to complicated, but the last thing I want is a dissobedient charactter, atleast not as my first character.

In some way, this is the idea behind CALD, to make a character help you with lucid dreaming. I, for one, am not a big fan of the “servant idea”, however, I believe that it certainly can be very convenient.

Of course it is possible to create such a character, for example:

Your character could maybe have a very compliant personality. If you don’t give him a (detailed) background, his personality will most likely be just what you want it to be like. If you create such a character, there is no need to feel sorry for him, there are people who are more than grateful to follow the orders of others.

This sounds like a fun technique, I may try this! Thanks for the information.

I don’t think you should worry about it too much, only by getting worked up by it will it actually become a problem. The idea of a minion/servant could really work for you, especially if you believe it will. Leijona answered it well, a compliant personality. Some people enjoy helping others so it isn’t hard to believe a character could be the same.
Let us know how it works out for you.

Good luck

I would like to give a very large congratulations and round of applause to CyberD

CyberD’s amazing CALD Guide and FAQ was published by the scribes for the FAQ’s and Tutorials section of our forum. It can now be found here.

I hope it helps many of you.

Thank you again to CyberD for a very comprehensive and amazing guide.

Good job CyberD! And thank you Eilatan (and the other Scribes) for publishing it in the first place!

Congratulations, CyberD!

Congrats Eil and CyberD! It’s a great guide

So long, too many words to edit… but we made it in the end. Hopefully someone can learn something from it, I know I did… and I wrote the thing

This is a bit of a bump. I’m not sure if people still post in this thread as it’s been quite a while, but I’ll post this anyway.

I’ve been pretty stressed lately and I considered going back to “see” my characters to alleviate the stress for a while. So, I had the idea of creating a MP3 hypnosis file for personal use. And, when I thought of my creating it, I couldn’t help but think of this thread so I came here to post again.
I’ve experienced a whole adventure with my characters over the past two years, and I’ve even began typing it out. It will have 100 Chapters.

This thread was a way to talk about something really interesting; I thought I was the only person that had their own characters that they’d interact with. It taught me a lot of things and I spoke to some great people in here. So, before I write anymore I guess I’d like to say thanks to everyone, particularly those who offered advice and listened to my experiences.

In regards to communicating with my characters again, I’m going to try something I’m familiar with - isochronic tones. I’m going to use ones that aid in daydreams, and am going to meditate as well so I can get into a deep state. In this deep state, I will ‘find’ my characters again - I might do this in the form of another adventure, who knows. I want to get back into lucid dreaming, and seeing as daydreaming used to be one of my favourite pastimes I’ll start again here. Just like old times.

I’m a little rusty on the CALD technique so if anyone is willing to offer some tips/advice it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again,

• Teraflare

There are still people around, I think the forum just gets a little slow from time to time. Regardless it’s cool to see someone who disappeared long before I got here.

Compared to me your CALD experience seems a lot more structured than my own. Thats the beauty of it though, it works so differently for everyone who uses it. If you do ever get through out all 100 chapters it’d be really cool if you’d share it with us.
If your mind is set I’m sure the mp3 and tones will help, there is nothing more important than getting into a good mindset when working on lucid dreaming.

Advice? I dunno what I can really offer since you already seem to have a pretty good plan. If I was in your position I’d probably read over some of the old posts, your own in particular.

Thank you for your response.
My CALD experience is pretty complex, I used to daydream about having charactes when I was as young as 5. From there, it began to become more advanced and I even constructed an entire universe for my characters and branched off many storylines for the universe. Shortly after, I stumbled upon this thread which talked about inducing LDs using characters, and then it really developed.
In regards to the story, the 100 Chapters is only part of the whole adventure I’ve had with my characters, over the years the experiences I’ve had could span over thousands of pages. I must have had about thirty characters in total or something similar.

From a little experimenting I’ve found that isochronic tones do not work for me as well as binaural beats, which is strange because I’ve read that isochronic tones are supposed to entrain your brain faster and without the use of headphones (I have been using headphones for them though). I’ve repeatedly used the tones but to no avail; and the first time I used binaural beats I could already notice a change in consciousness. I even used some binaural beats that specialise in changing brain activity to Theta/Delta (which if I recall is associated with relaxation and sleep), and I could really feel my eyelids become heavy, and I felt very close to sleep. I could have fallen asleep if I let myself, but I didn’t as I wanted to see if I could get hypnagogic imagery.
Next time I’ll try to find a beat that is geared towards conjuring closed-eye visuals. I’ll report the results and let everyone know if I see my characters.

–
In regards to your advice about reading my early posts, I’ll do exactly that. It will refresh my memory of what I used to know.
Thanks again.

• Teraflare
  (I get a little carried away typing posts sometimes)