| | As Tarin says: you get what you optimize for.
Thus, when walking around, pay attention to color and detail the colors and visuals of your experience, like you were trying to remember how to paint it later.
Also, as suggested: candle flame is good, and the black obsidian ball should work also: basically any kasina-type object.
When eyes are closed, if you can see any colors or shapes or even vague static, really pay attention to it, try to manipulate it if you can, and slowly develop out those colors and forms to more complex shapes.
All of this, coupled with pre-programming (read something about visualization exercises from whatever tradition), along with resolutions, are the standard methods.
Visions are interesting, generally take some sort of solid concentration, which has its own merits, and while many would counsel to the straight and narrow, one can often gain surprising things by following one's fascinations and interests to see where they lead.
Also, lucid dream work also is the sort of work that makes them more likely: read extensively, practice nightly, keep a journal, work on various jumping-out techniques, that sort of thing: fun, entertaining, sometimes profound or disturbing or both, and produces useful skills and perspectives at times, or at least the realization: wow, there is some serious stuff out there, and the mind is way more tunable and malleable than I though it was.
Daniel |