Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
The only thing I cant do is take a book and read. The same sentence change every time you read it, it is strange.
That is actually a good way to initiate lucid dreams.
I've had some experience lucid dreaming. There's a fair amount of woo stuff about it, especially on the net, but the core is real. You really do realize you're dreaming, it really does feel real, and you really can control your environment, to an extent. In my experience, you also have much better recall of the dream after you wake up.
The method I've had the most success with in initiating a lucid dream takes a fair amount of effort. Periodically during the day, say every hour or so, perform some test to determine if you're awake or not. Like you said, one good test is to try to read something, look away for a few seconds, and then read it again. That's how I achieved my first success in consciously initiating a lucid dream: I was dreaming that I was walking through a hallway, and there was a book sitting on a shelf. Thinking I was due for another "reality check," I picked up the book and read the first sentence, which was something about smugglers (I forget exactly what). When I read it again, it said, "You ought to do something about this." It was suprising to say the least to find out that that actually worked!
Another thing you can do is look at your reflection in a mirror. I'll make eye contact with my reflection, and in a moment its eyes will start moving independently. The drawback of that method is that it's usually so freaky that the shock wakes me up. I've always had a bit of a mirror phobia.
In fact, that's the most difficult thing about it for me. Even if the way I become lucid is mundane, the shock of realizing I'm dreaming -- that nothing I'm experiencing
right now is real -- is too much ontological dissonance to handle, and I wake up with my heart pounding, like after a nightmare. It's rare that I can maintain a lucid dream for more than a minute or two.
The other downside of my method is that it's a fair amount of work. You have to keep doing reality checks all day long, just to get yourself in the mental habit enough that you'll "remember" to do it while you're dreaming, too. And it takes time -- it's usually about two or three days of hourly reality-checking before I'll achieve lucidity.
There are some contraptions you can buy that claim to help you with lucid dreaming, mostly to do with sleep masks with computer-controlled blinking lights, but I've never tried them. I imagine they're probably not hard to make if you have some experience with electronics and get the parts at Radio Shack (do they still sell components there?).
As for the dreams themselves, mine are both terrific and disappointing. I have pretty much unlimited power -- except, well, it's limited by my own self-consciousness. For example, I can fly, but I have difficulty controlling myself. Sometimes I jerk violently around a room; other times I can only bring myself to hover a few inches off the floor. Sometimes I have balance problems that prevent me from even walking right (it feels like one leg is longer than the other).
As for sex (come on, that's what you all are thinking about!), it can be good or bad. The excitement can be there, but the physical sensations are a little...distant, at least for me. It makes sense, I suppose, since your body isn't actually getting any real physical stimulation. Or is it just the fact that I believe that which stops me from accepting the full experience? Hard question to answer. The upside of that is that you can do things that are normally very uncomfortable with no difficulty whatsoever.
Jeremy
Seriously, it's typically something that occupies my mind - family, work, hobbies, food, sex, death etc.
