Holy Crap, this is going to be long. If you buckle up and read through it, you should be able to learn something though. I am going to give you a lot of information, experiences, and conclusions, so you should be able to just look at the conclusions if you just want to believe me, or the experiences if you want to come to your own conclusions, or my information if you want to go through your own experiences. Remember, of course, that a fool learns from his own mistakes, and a wise man learns from others mistakes. This is going to be more in depth than I originally thought, but it will be fun for me to get it all out on paper. Sorry if this is too long for you to read, or shorter than you were expecting.
Beginning
How does almost every Lucid dreamer start? 6 years old nightmares. When I was a kid I started having constant nightmares and my mom told me two things.
Information
If you get in a nightmare just wake yourself up
If you wake up from a nightmare don’t just lay there or you can go back into the nightmare.
I automatically started waking up from nightmares, and as far as I remember, I had about 7 nightmares until I was 8. No more until I started LDing again, but that is a different story.
Conclusions
I have looked at a lot of naturals, and they all seem to start out somewhat like this. An older person making a small comment and it gets in their head. I didn’t pursue this, or else I might be a :::shudder::: natural. Thank goodness that I am not.
Nightmares
Nightmares seem to have a few options.
One:
Nightmares are more aware than other dreams, so when in them you have an inkling that it is real
Nightmares become nightmares because you are more aware.
In all dreams you have the idea that it is a dream and you can wake up. When you have the pre-intent to wake up when things get scary, you use that to your advantage, sometimes without even realizing that you are dreaming.
After This
I get out of dreaming all together. Dont know why. Till I am about 15. I start a few different practices for nighttime.
I would stay up late at night daydreaming or reading and imagining things. My imagination got pretty high at the time.
I thought that if I lay still after a dream (like I tried not to do on nightmares) I should be able to enter back into a dream.
Experience/conclusion
My dreams took on more of stories instead of randomness that they normally do. And because of my laying still (incubating) I was able to "finish" dreams.
16
I realized that dreams seem to come from what you think about all day. So I started imagining using the force all day every day. After 3 weeks I start seeing it in almost all of my dreams. Keep it up for a while, but then forget about the day practice, however the idea of doing the force in the dream stays and I use it in dreams all the time.
Some cute girl tells me to watch anime, so I do and I start adding a few things in my dreams. Rasengan, Melcher's door, chidori. None of them stick as well as the first, but it takes less time to get in the dream.
After I am 17 I have no time to spend playing basketball in my free time, so I spend all my nights fantasizing the footwork. I find it strange how my imagination follows the rules of logic, even outside a dream. I get better at basketball this way as well.
I played basketball from 6-8 m-f and most Saturdays not including games. When I got home at 8 I would set my alarm and then hit snooze over and over. One morning I realized that I was dreaming. I saw the gal I liked and I said "well since this is a dream we should go on a date" a DC stopped me before and told me that it wasnt a dream. I got confused and woke up.
Another time I realized that it was a dream and knew that I needed to go somewhere. I woke myself up before I remembered that I had an alarm set.
I spent about 90 days on a DJ as well when I was younger. I started getting about 2 dreams a night before I got bored of it.
Conclusions on these.
First is day residue obviously. I practiced quite a bit of incubation and such through this. This might have helped my confidence before LDing, but not much else because of the next part. Incubation seems to be something that you can practice and goes really well with subconscious expectation (will talk more about this later).
More data.
I have always hated sleep, so 18, 19, and 20 I slept about 5 hours a night. School, work, and girlfriend dominated my life and didn't leave much time for sleep in my opinion. Not a great excuse, I am twice as busy now as I was then, and I have time for sleep.
I developed a sleep schedule that I would go to sleep at different times and get a dream. I didn't think that it worked too well, but then I would always remember dreams later in the day. I had an average of 1 dream a night, even without sleeping much ever. I heard 2 things over this time.
If you wake up from a dream you will remember it (or have a higher chance of remembering it)
If you look at the color blue you will have a better chance of remembering dreams.
19 almost 20
My sister tells me that some people recognize that they are dreaming and can use that to control their dreams. I look up some stuff about it. I get two small bits of information and go for it.
Naps increase the chances.
Go to sleep intending to LD and you will.
I take a nap and viola. LD
Some could say that this was a "fake lucid dream" because of the "dream of a dream", but I knew 100% I was dreaming and even thought of dream things, FAs or dream scene changes often steal lucidity.
And then... I got married. Another chance that I could have taken that and gotten good without techniques. That might actually have been good. But I spent the first year of marriage just doing my timing method of remembering dreams.
21
Normal dream almost every night like always, and then all of the sudden I have this dream
My wife is going studying abroad to mexico and I decide to spend the 42 days learning to LD. I dont get any LDs. I look all at youtube videos and things like that. Nothing actually good.
Then a little later I get ETWOLD! I finally get an LD or two or three. Very spread out. Fun though.
I know it looks like my LDs have exploded since then, which is partly true, but honestly I feel like I have worked very hard for them and that application of knowledge, expectation, and consistency can work this well for everyone.
I started writing my DJ religiously and always having good goals to go after.
My goal journal looked like this:
| | | Week 1 | Dreams | Lucids | | | 07/1 | I | | | | 07/2 | II | | | | 07/3 | II | I | | | 07/4 | I | | | | 07/5 | | |
Dreams total: 8
Lucids: 1
END Journal
I always used 6 day weeks so that I could have 5 a month and have more goals. After I started getting 10 dreams or so a week, I made a change to only putting down dreams that I had written in my journal, I got that up to 36 a week and then I quit DJing because of time constraints. Here is a couple good places to get better at recall and dream journaling.
How to effectively Dream Journal
Dream Recall Compendium
Waking yourself up without an alarm
All of these take a consistent sleep schedule. Without it, you are wasting your time and intent. There are a lot of studies about intent and willpower, and intent and will power have a limited supply. It is kind of like a muscle, if you overwork it, it will stop working, so when dealing with it, it is best to make sure that you are using it right so that you don’t mess it up and do it wrong!
Water, expectation, and rhythm
If you can’t do this, it will take longer to LD. I would recommend practicing this for a while, if you want a quick way to do it, drink some water before bed (don’t do it if you are young or old and this can be a problem). Depending on how much you drink you will wake at different times of the night. Try different amounts of water and when you find some good times to wake up (for recall, awareness, and vividness). Then try to take away the water for the last one or two wakings and wake up without it. When you get better and better you don’t even need intent.
With just intent
You can also try the water thing with this, but it would be better without. The first thing to do is get a set schedule. sleeping the same time each night and waking the same time. Try to wake up 5 minutes before your alarm each day. Automatically, you will find yourself waking right before the alarm (it is something programmed into your brain). It should be somewhere near 5 minutes at first, because the thing that makes you wake up before the alarm couples with intent. Then, keep thinking that you will wake up at that time, but also think that you will wake up about 3 or 4 hours before that. Think of the time (prolly like 3 or 4) and know that you will wake up then. Because of the first part you should have some expectation working on your side, and it will make this part a breeze. Then add times until you get to 4-6 wakenings a night, any more than that can mess with you, unless you use the last REM snooze troll, but that isn’t something I do, so ask other people about it. :P
Some thoughts on Intent
In the 42 days that my wife was gone I got my sleep schedule 100% on track, and I had always practiced waking with intent. I found it easier than ever since I did it every single night and didn’t have anyone trying to keep me up all night. ;) My wife found the same thing, so we both decided to make sure that we keep a good schedule, my head was so much clearer sleeping all the time and it helped me out a lot in school and work. You may not realize this, but sleeping too much or too little can kill the amount of willpower (intent) you have and make it harder to do things in waking life as well because the motivation is gone.
LaBerge helped me learn how easy it was to LD and how to fall asleep well, DV kept me well motivated and gave me some people to work hard with to keep me on track.
Here are some thought processes that I went through when first trying to LD and some I go through now that are good for intent and expectations
"I have been a dreamer of sorts my whole life, I should be good at this."
"I am going to be the best ever."
"What is the difference from this night and a night that I lucid dreamed?"
"Even if I caught on slow at the very beginning, I can make up for it later, because I always do better after learning more."
Anyways... I did lot of meditation with stuff like this. Get myself to believe that I basically had exactly what it takes to be the very best (that no one ever was).
RCing
In my opinion a lot of things that we do like this are trying for day residue and we would be better off trying to use incubation. incubation is funner as well. However, trying to think about LDing all the time is the overarching goal, but is that really what we want? Something that takes up our mind process all the time. I like hukif’s idea of the ADA/RC that is just always in the back of your mind. I have no success with this so far, but we will see, because I am only a month or so in.
WILD before before bed
The forbidden fruit! ah!!! ;) I know people don’t like talking about this, because either “it can’t be done” or “certain people can do it and then there is the rest of us.” I can only state my personal experience.
I have done it twice. I have only tried it like 10 times, which is much higher than my normal WILDing rate.
BUT! The other 8 times that I tried this I ended up not being able to sleep or getting really close to sleep and seeming to lose the first hour and a half of sleep. So that messed up my chances for WILD and DILD later. So I deemed it too dangerous, might pick up at a later date. Also my LDs from it were very short, so I don’t know if that is because me or the cycle, but it wasn’t worth the effort. Note that 2/10 was after about 150 LDs, of which 70 were WILD types (DEILD and WILD) so I was already used to the phase, so my chances for succeeding were far above a beginner, but still not worth it.
DJing
Good for you, can help recall. Takes too much time and seems to kill motivation for LDing. I don’t bother with it anymore (since January 2013) and it seems to have a small effect on my recall. I don’t think that it is worth it for me, it might help you more than me, but a micro WBTB (or 6) is really the best for recall in my opinion. ;) I think that it might be irreplaceable at first, but any person can get peak recall without it. Now you may not remember your dreams in a month, so you might want to make sure you right down the ones you want to save, or at least the key details. I write down key details at every awakening during my:
Micro WBTB!!!!
I have talked a little about this before, honestly the micro WBTB blows a normal WBTB out of the water. It is really simple and easy, wake up to a point close to where you won’t be able to get back to sleep and then go back to sleep. tap up some dreams on your phone or computer or write them down as well. Very simple. It works best if you use my intent or water method, but you can use an alarm if you want to. :P Make sure to go from the right end at finding the perfect balance of awake/asleep and go from too tired to too awake so that you don’t have nights that you can’t get back to sleep.
WILD/DILD
So I noticed some similarities in WILD and DILD techniques and decided to try them out together at the beginning, a little risky but whatever. Each time when going to sleep I will be trying for both, no reason to just go for one. I get all the expectation and intent up for a DILD and then try to fall asleep without losing consciousness for WILD. Now the key to this is like the last one, and lean toward losing consciousness instead of keeping ahold of it as hard as you can, sleep needs to be had above all. I wouldn’t have as many WILDs or DILDs if I did this.
DEILD and Stabilization
You all know DEILD and stabilization. If you don't, then read about them here.
DEILD:
Dutchraptor's Deild Guide - Become an Ld god.
Stabilization:
My Tutorial for extending Lucid Dream Time. Hours of LD. - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views
One of the biggest things in losing stability is worrying about losing the dream. DEILD is really simple and easy, you can read the guides or go by the guide I heard when I first started LDing:
"If you wake up from a dream, you can just play dead and go back to the dream."
Simple and easy. :)
So after this simple and easy tech, I get a DEILD after most lucids. At first I used a lot of stabilization ideas to stay lucid, but after I got the idea stuck in my head that any time I wake up early from a dream I can just DEILD back. I never worried about it and all of the sudden my lucids got way longer and I stopped being able to DEILD after them, almost like I DEILD only if I wake up at the end of the cycle, but if I don't wake up early, I won't be able to DEILD. So now I don't have any reason to stabilize, other than just calming myself, because if you are too excited when you wake up for a DEILD, it is hard to go back in. Expectation at work.
Stabilization
I have a few ways to stabilize, so I will note the ideas down here.
Stress and frustration
A biiiig problem among prospective LDers. Most people have these two thoughts:
"I don't stress about anything!"
But later on I see them getting frustrated by their LDs. This leads to undproductivity in everything. If you have a drive for more instead of a frustration from the past, you will see major improvement.
Frustration is the gap between what we expect and what we experience. So should you lower your expectations so that you dont get frustrated? Frick no! Last year I wanted 365 LDs. I had gotten 52 the six months before. 365 would have been out of this world good! I didn't get it. I got 325. But! 325 is way more than most people would expect for the 6-18th month of LDing, so I can be proud about that. Set your final goals to something crazy. Set your timed goals to a barely out of reach place, something that you would have to do better than you are now to acheive. This is why I want 1000 LDs this year. Because if I keep at the pace I was at the last 6 months, I will easily get 400. Screw that. I am gonna be beyond that in the next 12 months. I expect to do better, but if I fail, I will fa short of a mighty goal, not a wimpy one! :P
Goals vs lucidity
A lot of people claim goal initiated lucid dreams, and I have noticed something I think is interesting. Some people accomplish a lot in their lucid dreams even in the first 100. Which is a little strange, because of the next thing I am putting. I think however that for most people, concentrating on a goal will make them lucid less often, because their intent is split between two things. So a lot of people will only get 5 lucid dreams a month or so and accomplish things in 3 because they always want to do goals. I really believe that this is kind of wanting to score a touchdown before catching the catch. This can cause you to miss the catch. I know I dont accomplish a lot in LDs (I try a goal in like 25% of LDs, and it just jumped to that. It was closer to 10%), but I am working on getting lucid now, and after that I will start working more on all my goals. A lot of you wonder why I am racing ahead in LD count, I am working only on this.
Good workers do first things first and work on one thing at a time.
A big difference in my life of LDing has been a quote from a well known pastor in Montana, Levi Lusko
"If you follow someone, you will end up where they end up."
Obviously this was said about who Christians follow and the company they keep, but it really applies in every hobby and anything that you do.
Obvious and simple, yet everyone seems to forget this. They see someone with a week of LDing off a technique and the person had 5 LDs, yet they listen to what that guy says vs what sageous or someone else that knows about LDing says because it is easier. Listen to the advice of people that are either heading where you want go, or are where you want to be.
Another good quote we all prolly know:
"Aim for the stars and even if you fail you can land on the moon."
A lot of people have a goal of 1 lucid a week or 1 lucid a night. The problem with this is that they fall short of their goals and end up with a small number. You want 1 lucid a week, but you get one a month. You want 1 a night, but you get one every two weeks. Etc. I aim for more lucids per night than anyone ever, and through my intent believe that I can get their, now I may not, but I may fail and end up where people like hukif are at. Make sense? It does to me, so I guess that is all that matters.
If you want a lot of LDs, you gotta change your expectation, so that even if you are below expectations, you LD a lot.
Dream Control
As far as I have found, dream control is pretty easy, but it takes some basic types of dream control, call them what you will.
A Expectation controlling
This is probably what you hear most. "just change what you expect" problem being, I "expect" to succeed, but my subconscious expects me to fail, haha, and subconscious expectation is what your dream is guided by. I believe that expectation is governed by experience, so if you are having trouble just expecting something to happen, there are a couple ways I know around it.
1 No turning back
I first tried to fly when I first LDed (like everyone else), but I couldn't seem to do it. I believe it is because when I jump, I know the exact time I am going to land because of years of jumping and practicing my vertical, so unlike most people that jump less than 1 time a day, I jump at least 100 times a day, so this feeling of jumping and landing is burned into my mind. I had to change my expectation, but the problem after this was, after failing, my expectation changed to failing, and it wasn't until about 70 LDs in that I stopped having troubles with it, because I had to convince my subconscious that I really expected to fly. I was always good at flying cars and telekinesis, so I used flying cars 3 times and jumped out when I got high enough for it to hurt (a mile up or so). Each time I would start flying after falling for about 30 seconds.
2 Remember
So now my expectation was to be able to fly only when jumping out of cars, but I was able to turn it over to always by remembering the last time I flew, and not thinking about the jumping out of cars, just remembering that I could fly.
3 Fake memories
I know that all of you have had these in non lucids, but you can have them in lucids as well, and it is the easiest way I have found to change expectation on something that you have not experienced. Think of a time that you did something that you have not done. It is hard to do at first, but it is very simple, at first you feel like you are lying about it, but when you start to get good at it, you start creating a dream world from fake memories and getting cookies out of the oven because you "put them there" and moving the sun in the sky because you do this every day. it is pretty nice.
4 Walking
I realized that remembering flying was taking time and mental energy after a while and developed a new way to do it. I know do this way with a lot of stuff, but do the other techniques for fun. I call this the walking technique because that is where I came up with the idea. I realized that in non lucids, you do whatever feels natural all the time, you jump into a virtual reality of crazy without a second thought, fight Charles Xavier? Why not? I had a semi lucid dream turn into a full blown lucid, in which I was already flying and having a date with my wife. I wondered how I was flying without doing my memory technique, and I realized that I had just flown because it was something that the previous thought process didn't have to think twice about it. I was contemplating this all day, and when I was walking down the street on my route I thought of something:
"I haven't thought about walking all day, yet I am doing it." I realized that this was the attitude I should take with flying in dreams. I could call it a "meh" attitude, don't really think about it, just do it. Don't "fly" over to that mountain, just go over there.
5 dream universe
Sounds weird, but it is very simple, it is the normal control you use everywhere you go, you want to start a car, turn the key, you want to change the channel, grab the remote. This is simple, and people seem to forget about it the most. This is by far the easiest form of dream control, as all it takes is for you to use an object as it was originally purposed, or your body. If you want to be able to do something like a "kamehameha wave" or "rasengan" it might be easier to do it if you are with Goku or in Konoha (respectively). Asking a dream character how to do something is a good way to get away from having to summon a DC or teleport, because if they think that you can do it, then the universe believes you can do it. I believe that this is how people fly so easily (most). They believe that when in a dream it is easy to fly, most have had "flying dreams", so the universe they assigned themselves "dream world" is a world where you can fly. I used to have a hard time summoning something in front of my eyes, but one time I became lucid at hogwarts, and making a patronus or any magic I knew with a wand was easy, because of where I believed I was at. Hope this makes sense. :P
B Direct Controlling
Honestly all direct control could be just expectation control, a lot of people call it "will power" that they use to change the world to what they want, but it could just as easily be dream universe control, with the thought "because this is a dream, I can do anything". :P just a thought though.
SSILD
Some people think that I am "really good at SSILD" because of the 30 day trial run. Honestly, when I did that I was already on a good LDing run, and SSILD complemented (just found out that there is a difference between compliment and complement 0_0 blew my mind) it a lot. This technique is the basic Micro WBTB, and some awareness exercises in my opinion, good to add on to a schedule if you want, but not as a full technique, it should raise awareness in a dream, but it doesn't matter if you never think about dreams ever.
lucispiration
I feel like something we all need to look at is exactly why we want to LD and find things that go with it. My "lucid encouragement" thread gives a lot of ideas for this. Things like Sword Art Online, the Matrix, Ready Player One, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Owl City, Adventure time, and many many other things are things specific to me. I would recommend writing down a list of all the things that make you want to LD and doing at least one a day (music in the background, one chapter of a book, one issue of manga, or just think about it for a bit).
Summary conclusions and Awareness
I didn't say much about awareness. I feel like for me awareness comes just from raising recall, so all I need to worry about on that side is really sleeping enough. Like Sageous has said, lucid dreaming is a 3 legged stool, and if you remember the analogy, expectation wasn't one of the legs, because I believe that it isn't something limited to LDing, you gotta believe in yourself if you want to LD. That is why people that LD are normally in good shape, they are people that do what they want to do, not people with a lot of time. If it was people with a lot of time that accomplished things, then America would be filled with awesome wonderful things since the unemployment rate is so high, but it seems like the people that don't work to keep a job normally don't work on anything, hence unemployed (this is just for most, there are a lot of people, especially near where I live) that got laid off and actually try really hard to get back to work, but there just is too few jobs. You need to be driven and self motivated, you need to stick with it, even when you don't want to. Every other month or so I have a span of 10 days where I would rather do anything but try to LD.
You have heard "if at first you dont succeed..." Blah blah blah. Simply enough, think of it like this. You only have to succeed in one way in order to be successful. It works for your job and many other places, like LDing. You don't need to LD like hukif in order to be successful at LDing. Looking at a few people that LD every single every night, I can tell you that there is only one thing that makes them similar, they didn't give up, even after years of going.
Being successful could also be deciding to do something, or not to do something beforehand, and not changing your mind no matter what. Yet again, applies to everything, but in LDing, you will want to quit, so promise yourself that you will try to LD every night for the next 2 months, no exceptions, and then after that you add one or two nights a month where you still try and LD, but don't worry about the sleeping part. Go party or whatever you want. When you start LDing, you need to count the cost or you will end up leaving when the bill comes.
Special thanks to Hyu, had I not read your DJ I would have counted LDing not worth it because not many people talk about going back to universes, but you came out with a guide for persistent realms about a week before I found your DJ.
If anyone disagrees with me or thinks I am bonkers, then good for you! I don't really care about being right 100% of the time, but about coming up with useful theories, if I am wrong though, I would like it to be stated so that I can think over your opinion and mine and use the most useful. I hope this is thought provoking and fun for you to read.
If you want my thoughts about a specific thing, then ask in the comments, and I will answer and put the answer in the original thread (if a staff member will help me with it ;)). I don't put much about a few subjects like awareness because there are people that exceed in this area and it would be better for you to read one of their ramblings.
Beginning
How does almost every Lucid dreamer start? 6 years old nightmares. When I was a kid I started having constant nightmares and my mom told me two things.
Information
If you get in a nightmare just wake yourself up
If you wake up from a nightmare don’t just lay there or you can go back into the nightmare.
I automatically started waking up from nightmares, and as far as I remember, I had about 7 nightmares until I was 8. No more until I started LDing again, but that is a different story.
Conclusions
I have looked at a lot of naturals, and they all seem to start out somewhat like this. An older person making a small comment and it gets in their head. I didn’t pursue this, or else I might be a :::shudder::: natural. Thank goodness that I am not.
Nightmares
Nightmares seem to have a few options.
One:
Nightmares are more aware than other dreams, so when in them you have an inkling that it is real
Nightmares become nightmares because you are more aware.
In all dreams you have the idea that it is a dream and you can wake up. When you have the pre-intent to wake up when things get scary, you use that to your advantage, sometimes without even realizing that you are dreaming.
After This
I get out of dreaming all together. Dont know why. Till I am about 15. I start a few different practices for nighttime.
I would stay up late at night daydreaming or reading and imagining things. My imagination got pretty high at the time.
I thought that if I lay still after a dream (like I tried not to do on nightmares) I should be able to enter back into a dream.
Experience/conclusion
My dreams took on more of stories instead of randomness that they normally do. And because of my laying still (incubating) I was able to "finish" dreams.
16
I realized that dreams seem to come from what you think about all day. So I started imagining using the force all day every day. After 3 weeks I start seeing it in almost all of my dreams. Keep it up for a while, but then forget about the day practice, however the idea of doing the force in the dream stays and I use it in dreams all the time.
Some cute girl tells me to watch anime, so I do and I start adding a few things in my dreams. Rasengan, Melcher's door, chidori. None of them stick as well as the first, but it takes less time to get in the dream.
After I am 17 I have no time to spend playing basketball in my free time, so I spend all my nights fantasizing the footwork. I find it strange how my imagination follows the rules of logic, even outside a dream. I get better at basketball this way as well.
I played basketball from 6-8 m-f and most Saturdays not including games. When I got home at 8 I would set my alarm and then hit snooze over and over. One morning I realized that I was dreaming. I saw the gal I liked and I said "well since this is a dream we should go on a date" a DC stopped me before and told me that it wasnt a dream. I got confused and woke up.
Another time I realized that it was a dream and knew that I needed to go somewhere. I woke myself up before I remembered that I had an alarm set.
I spent about 90 days on a DJ as well when I was younger. I started getting about 2 dreams a night before I got bored of it.
Conclusions on these.
First is day residue obviously. I practiced quite a bit of incubation and such through this. This might have helped my confidence before LDing, but not much else because of the next part. Incubation seems to be something that you can practice and goes really well with subconscious expectation (will talk more about this later).
More data.
I have always hated sleep, so 18, 19, and 20 I slept about 5 hours a night. School, work, and girlfriend dominated my life and didn't leave much time for sleep in my opinion. Not a great excuse, I am twice as busy now as I was then, and I have time for sleep.
I developed a sleep schedule that I would go to sleep at different times and get a dream. I didn't think that it worked too well, but then I would always remember dreams later in the day. I had an average of 1 dream a night, even without sleeping much ever. I heard 2 things over this time.
If you wake up from a dream you will remember it (or have a higher chance of remembering it)
If you look at the color blue you will have a better chance of remembering dreams.
19 almost 20
My sister tells me that some people recognize that they are dreaming and can use that to control their dreams. I look up some stuff about it. I get two small bits of information and go for it.
Naps increase the chances.
Go to sleep intending to LD and you will.
I take a nap and viola. LD
Spoiler for LD:
Some could say that this was a "fake lucid dream" because of the "dream of a dream", but I knew 100% I was dreaming and even thought of dream things, FAs or dream scene changes often steal lucidity.
And then... I got married. Another chance that I could have taken that and gotten good without techniques. That might actually have been good. But I spent the first year of marriage just doing my timing method of remembering dreams.
21
Normal dream almost every night like always, and then all of the sudden I have this dream
Spoiler for LD:
My wife is going studying abroad to mexico and I decide to spend the 42 days learning to LD. I dont get any LDs. I look all at youtube videos and things like that. Nothing actually good.
Then a little later I get ETWOLD! I finally get an LD or two or three. Very spread out. Fun though.
I know it looks like my LDs have exploded since then, which is partly true, but honestly I feel like I have worked very hard for them and that application of knowledge, expectation, and consistency can work this well for everyone.
I started writing my DJ religiously and always having good goals to go after.
My goal journal looked like this:
| | | Week 1 | Dreams | Lucids | | | 07/1 | I | | | | 07/2 | II | | | | 07/3 | II | I | | | 07/4 | I | | | | 07/5 | | |
Dreams total: 8
Lucids: 1
END Journal
I always used 6 day weeks so that I could have 5 a month and have more goals. After I started getting 10 dreams or so a week, I made a change to only putting down dreams that I had written in my journal, I got that up to 36 a week and then I quit DJing because of time constraints. Here is a couple good places to get better at recall and dream journaling.
How to effectively Dream Journal
Dream Recall Compendium
Waking yourself up without an alarm
All of these take a consistent sleep schedule. Without it, you are wasting your time and intent. There are a lot of studies about intent and willpower, and intent and will power have a limited supply. It is kind of like a muscle, if you overwork it, it will stop working, so when dealing with it, it is best to make sure that you are using it right so that you don’t mess it up and do it wrong!
Water, expectation, and rhythm
If you can’t do this, it will take longer to LD. I would recommend practicing this for a while, if you want a quick way to do it, drink some water before bed (don’t do it if you are young or old and this can be a problem). Depending on how much you drink you will wake at different times of the night. Try different amounts of water and when you find some good times to wake up (for recall, awareness, and vividness). Then try to take away the water for the last one or two wakings and wake up without it. When you get better and better you don’t even need intent.
With just intent
You can also try the water thing with this, but it would be better without. The first thing to do is get a set schedule. sleeping the same time each night and waking the same time. Try to wake up 5 minutes before your alarm each day. Automatically, you will find yourself waking right before the alarm (it is something programmed into your brain). It should be somewhere near 5 minutes at first, because the thing that makes you wake up before the alarm couples with intent. Then, keep thinking that you will wake up at that time, but also think that you will wake up about 3 or 4 hours before that. Think of the time (prolly like 3 or 4) and know that you will wake up then. Because of the first part you should have some expectation working on your side, and it will make this part a breeze. Then add times until you get to 4-6 wakenings a night, any more than that can mess with you, unless you use the last REM snooze troll, but that isn’t something I do, so ask other people about it. :P
Some thoughts on Intent
In the 42 days that my wife was gone I got my sleep schedule 100% on track, and I had always practiced waking with intent. I found it easier than ever since I did it every single night and didn’t have anyone trying to keep me up all night. ;) My wife found the same thing, so we both decided to make sure that we keep a good schedule, my head was so much clearer sleeping all the time and it helped me out a lot in school and work. You may not realize this, but sleeping too much or too little can kill the amount of willpower (intent) you have and make it harder to do things in waking life as well because the motivation is gone.
LaBerge helped me learn how easy it was to LD and how to fall asleep well, DV kept me well motivated and gave me some people to work hard with to keep me on track.
Here are some thought processes that I went through when first trying to LD and some I go through now that are good for intent and expectations
"I have been a dreamer of sorts my whole life, I should be good at this."
"I am going to be the best ever."
"What is the difference from this night and a night that I lucid dreamed?"
"Even if I caught on slow at the very beginning, I can make up for it later, because I always do better after learning more."
Anyways... I did lot of meditation with stuff like this. Get myself to believe that I basically had exactly what it takes to be the very best (that no one ever was).
RCing
In my opinion a lot of things that we do like this are trying for day residue and we would be better off trying to use incubation. incubation is funner as well. However, trying to think about LDing all the time is the overarching goal, but is that really what we want? Something that takes up our mind process all the time. I like hukif’s idea of the ADA/RC that is just always in the back of your mind. I have no success with this so far, but we will see, because I am only a month or so in.
WILD before before bed
The forbidden fruit! ah!!! ;) I know people don’t like talking about this, because either “it can’t be done” or “certain people can do it and then there is the rest of us.” I can only state my personal experience.
I have done it twice. I have only tried it like 10 times, which is much higher than my normal WILDing rate.
BUT! The other 8 times that I tried this I ended up not being able to sleep or getting really close to sleep and seeming to lose the first hour and a half of sleep. So that messed up my chances for WILD and DILD later. So I deemed it too dangerous, might pick up at a later date. Also my LDs from it were very short, so I don’t know if that is because me or the cycle, but it wasn’t worth the effort. Note that 2/10 was after about 150 LDs, of which 70 were WILD types (DEILD and WILD) so I was already used to the phase, so my chances for succeeding were far above a beginner, but still not worth it.
DJing
Good for you, can help recall. Takes too much time and seems to kill motivation for LDing. I don’t bother with it anymore (since January 2013) and it seems to have a small effect on my recall. I don’t think that it is worth it for me, it might help you more than me, but a micro WBTB (or 6) is really the best for recall in my opinion. ;) I think that it might be irreplaceable at first, but any person can get peak recall without it. Now you may not remember your dreams in a month, so you might want to make sure you right down the ones you want to save, or at least the key details. I write down key details at every awakening during my:
Micro WBTB!!!!
I have talked a little about this before, honestly the micro WBTB blows a normal WBTB out of the water. It is really simple and easy, wake up to a point close to where you won’t be able to get back to sleep and then go back to sleep. tap up some dreams on your phone or computer or write them down as well. Very simple. It works best if you use my intent or water method, but you can use an alarm if you want to. :P Make sure to go from the right end at finding the perfect balance of awake/asleep and go from too tired to too awake so that you don’t have nights that you can’t get back to sleep.
WILD/DILD
So I noticed some similarities in WILD and DILD techniques and decided to try them out together at the beginning, a little risky but whatever. Each time when going to sleep I will be trying for both, no reason to just go for one. I get all the expectation and intent up for a DILD and then try to fall asleep without losing consciousness for WILD. Now the key to this is like the last one, and lean toward losing consciousness instead of keeping ahold of it as hard as you can, sleep needs to be had above all. I wouldn’t have as many WILDs or DILDs if I did this.
DEILD and Stabilization
You all know DEILD and stabilization. If you don't, then read about them here.
DEILD:
Dutchraptor's Deild Guide - Become an Ld god.
Stabilization:
My Tutorial for extending Lucid Dream Time. Hours of LD. - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views
One of the biggest things in losing stability is worrying about losing the dream. DEILD is really simple and easy, you can read the guides or go by the guide I heard when I first started LDing:
"If you wake up from a dream, you can just play dead and go back to the dream."
Simple and easy. :)
So after this simple and easy tech, I get a DEILD after most lucids. At first I used a lot of stabilization ideas to stay lucid, but after I got the idea stuck in my head that any time I wake up early from a dream I can just DEILD back. I never worried about it and all of the sudden my lucids got way longer and I stopped being able to DEILD after them, almost like I DEILD only if I wake up at the end of the cycle, but if I don't wake up early, I won't be able to DEILD. So now I don't have any reason to stabilize, other than just calming myself, because if you are too excited when you wake up for a DEILD, it is hard to go back in. Expectation at work.
Stabilization
I have a few ways to stabilize, so I will note the ideas down here.
Stress and frustration
A biiiig problem among prospective LDers. Most people have these two thoughts:
"I don't stress about anything!"
But later on I see them getting frustrated by their LDs. This leads to undproductivity in everything. If you have a drive for more instead of a frustration from the past, you will see major improvement.
Frustration is the gap between what we expect and what we experience. So should you lower your expectations so that you dont get frustrated? Frick no! Last year I wanted 365 LDs. I had gotten 52 the six months before. 365 would have been out of this world good! I didn't get it. I got 325. But! 325 is way more than most people would expect for the 6-18th month of LDing, so I can be proud about that. Set your final goals to something crazy. Set your timed goals to a barely out of reach place, something that you would have to do better than you are now to acheive. This is why I want 1000 LDs this year. Because if I keep at the pace I was at the last 6 months, I will easily get 400. Screw that. I am gonna be beyond that in the next 12 months. I expect to do better, but if I fail, I will fa short of a mighty goal, not a wimpy one! :P
Goals vs lucidity
A lot of people claim goal initiated lucid dreams, and I have noticed something I think is interesting. Some people accomplish a lot in their lucid dreams even in the first 100. Which is a little strange, because of the next thing I am putting. I think however that for most people, concentrating on a goal will make them lucid less often, because their intent is split between two things. So a lot of people will only get 5 lucid dreams a month or so and accomplish things in 3 because they always want to do goals. I really believe that this is kind of wanting to score a touchdown before catching the catch. This can cause you to miss the catch. I know I dont accomplish a lot in LDs (I try a goal in like 25% of LDs, and it just jumped to that. It was closer to 10%), but I am working on getting lucid now, and after that I will start working more on all my goals. A lot of you wonder why I am racing ahead in LD count, I am working only on this.
Good workers do first things first and work on one thing at a time.
A big difference in my life of LDing has been a quote from a well known pastor in Montana, Levi Lusko
"If you follow someone, you will end up where they end up."
Obviously this was said about who Christians follow and the company they keep, but it really applies in every hobby and anything that you do.
Obvious and simple, yet everyone seems to forget this. They see someone with a week of LDing off a technique and the person had 5 LDs, yet they listen to what that guy says vs what sageous or someone else that knows about LDing says because it is easier. Listen to the advice of people that are either heading where you want go, or are where you want to be.
Another good quote we all prolly know:
"Aim for the stars and even if you fail you can land on the moon."
A lot of people have a goal of 1 lucid a week or 1 lucid a night. The problem with this is that they fall short of their goals and end up with a small number. You want 1 lucid a week, but you get one a month. You want 1 a night, but you get one every two weeks. Etc. I aim for more lucids per night than anyone ever, and through my intent believe that I can get their, now I may not, but I may fail and end up where people like hukif are at. Make sense? It does to me, so I guess that is all that matters.
If you want a lot of LDs, you gotta change your expectation, so that even if you are below expectations, you LD a lot.
Dream Control
As far as I have found, dream control is pretty easy, but it takes some basic types of dream control, call them what you will.
A Expectation controlling
This is probably what you hear most. "just change what you expect" problem being, I "expect" to succeed, but my subconscious expects me to fail, haha, and subconscious expectation is what your dream is guided by. I believe that expectation is governed by experience, so if you are having trouble just expecting something to happen, there are a couple ways I know around it.
1 No turning back
I first tried to fly when I first LDed (like everyone else), but I couldn't seem to do it. I believe it is because when I jump, I know the exact time I am going to land because of years of jumping and practicing my vertical, so unlike most people that jump less than 1 time a day, I jump at least 100 times a day, so this feeling of jumping and landing is burned into my mind. I had to change my expectation, but the problem after this was, after failing, my expectation changed to failing, and it wasn't until about 70 LDs in that I stopped having troubles with it, because I had to convince my subconscious that I really expected to fly. I was always good at flying cars and telekinesis, so I used flying cars 3 times and jumped out when I got high enough for it to hurt (a mile up or so). Each time I would start flying after falling for about 30 seconds.
2 Remember
So now my expectation was to be able to fly only when jumping out of cars, but I was able to turn it over to always by remembering the last time I flew, and not thinking about the jumping out of cars, just remembering that I could fly.
3 Fake memories
I know that all of you have had these in non lucids, but you can have them in lucids as well, and it is the easiest way I have found to change expectation on something that you have not experienced. Think of a time that you did something that you have not done. It is hard to do at first, but it is very simple, at first you feel like you are lying about it, but when you start to get good at it, you start creating a dream world from fake memories and getting cookies out of the oven because you "put them there" and moving the sun in the sky because you do this every day. it is pretty nice.
4 Walking
I realized that remembering flying was taking time and mental energy after a while and developed a new way to do it. I know do this way with a lot of stuff, but do the other techniques for fun. I call this the walking technique because that is where I came up with the idea. I realized that in non lucids, you do whatever feels natural all the time, you jump into a virtual reality of crazy without a second thought, fight Charles Xavier? Why not? I had a semi lucid dream turn into a full blown lucid, in which I was already flying and having a date with my wife. I wondered how I was flying without doing my memory technique, and I realized that I had just flown because it was something that the previous thought process didn't have to think twice about it. I was contemplating this all day, and when I was walking down the street on my route I thought of something:
"I haven't thought about walking all day, yet I am doing it." I realized that this was the attitude I should take with flying in dreams. I could call it a "meh" attitude, don't really think about it, just do it. Don't "fly" over to that mountain, just go over there.
5 dream universe
Sounds weird, but it is very simple, it is the normal control you use everywhere you go, you want to start a car, turn the key, you want to change the channel, grab the remote. This is simple, and people seem to forget about it the most. This is by far the easiest form of dream control, as all it takes is for you to use an object as it was originally purposed, or your body. If you want to be able to do something like a "kamehameha wave" or "rasengan" it might be easier to do it if you are with Goku or in Konoha (respectively). Asking a dream character how to do something is a good way to get away from having to summon a DC or teleport, because if they think that you can do it, then the universe believes you can do it. I believe that this is how people fly so easily (most). They believe that when in a dream it is easy to fly, most have had "flying dreams", so the universe they assigned themselves "dream world" is a world where you can fly. I used to have a hard time summoning something in front of my eyes, but one time I became lucid at hogwarts, and making a patronus or any magic I knew with a wand was easy, because of where I believed I was at. Hope this makes sense. :P
B Direct Controlling
Honestly all direct control could be just expectation control, a lot of people call it "will power" that they use to change the world to what they want, but it could just as easily be dream universe control, with the thought "because this is a dream, I can do anything". :P just a thought though.
SSILD
Some people think that I am "really good at SSILD" because of the 30 day trial run. Honestly, when I did that I was already on a good LDing run, and SSILD complemented (just found out that there is a difference between compliment and complement 0_0 blew my mind) it a lot. This technique is the basic Micro WBTB, and some awareness exercises in my opinion, good to add on to a schedule if you want, but not as a full technique, it should raise awareness in a dream, but it doesn't matter if you never think about dreams ever.
lucispiration
I feel like something we all need to look at is exactly why we want to LD and find things that go with it. My "lucid encouragement" thread gives a lot of ideas for this. Things like Sword Art Online, the Matrix, Ready Player One, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Owl City, Adventure time, and many many other things are things specific to me. I would recommend writing down a list of all the things that make you want to LD and doing at least one a day (music in the background, one chapter of a book, one issue of manga, or just think about it for a bit).
Summary conclusions and Awareness
I didn't say much about awareness. I feel like for me awareness comes just from raising recall, so all I need to worry about on that side is really sleeping enough. Like Sageous has said, lucid dreaming is a 3 legged stool, and if you remember the analogy, expectation wasn't one of the legs, because I believe that it isn't something limited to LDing, you gotta believe in yourself if you want to LD. That is why people that LD are normally in good shape, they are people that do what they want to do, not people with a lot of time. If it was people with a lot of time that accomplished things, then America would be filled with awesome wonderful things since the unemployment rate is so high, but it seems like the people that don't work to keep a job normally don't work on anything, hence unemployed (this is just for most, there are a lot of people, especially near where I live) that got laid off and actually try really hard to get back to work, but there just is too few jobs. You need to be driven and self motivated, you need to stick with it, even when you don't want to. Every other month or so I have a span of 10 days where I would rather do anything but try to LD.
You have heard "if at first you dont succeed..." Blah blah blah. Simply enough, think of it like this. You only have to succeed in one way in order to be successful. It works for your job and many other places, like LDing. You don't need to LD like hukif in order to be successful at LDing. Looking at a few people that LD every single every night, I can tell you that there is only one thing that makes them similar, they didn't give up, even after years of going.
Being successful could also be deciding to do something, or not to do something beforehand, and not changing your mind no matter what. Yet again, applies to everything, but in LDing, you will want to quit, so promise yourself that you will try to LD every night for the next 2 months, no exceptions, and then after that you add one or two nights a month where you still try and LD, but don't worry about the sleeping part. Go party or whatever you want. When you start LDing, you need to count the cost or you will end up leaving when the bill comes.
Special thanks to Hyu, had I not read your DJ I would have counted LDing not worth it because not many people talk about going back to universes, but you came out with a guide for persistent realms about a week before I found your DJ.
If anyone disagrees with me or thinks I am bonkers, then good for you! I don't really care about being right 100% of the time, but about coming up with useful theories, if I am wrong though, I would like it to be stated so that I can think over your opinion and mine and use the most useful. I hope this is thought provoking and fun for you to read.
If you want my thoughts about a specific thing, then ask in the comments, and I will answer and put the answer in the original thread (if a staff member will help me with it ;)). I don't put much about a few subjects like awareness because there are people that exceed in this area and it would be better for you to read one of their ramblings.
via Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views - Attaining Lucidity http://ift.tt/1eYKPgw
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