After a particularly long dry stretch in March and April (not entirely unexpected considering it coincided with a particularly intense international business trip with the usual accompanying dose of jet-lag), I've decided that I need to refocus my efforts on lucid dreaming, and getting lucid a lot more in particular. Dream recall has remained pretty good, but average DJ entry detail has shrunk considerably. In my first year I could spend 1-2 hours a day transcribing the DJ voice recorder notes from the night. Now, I almost never record during the night, preferring instead to maintain a mental running list of dreams across wakings. I think that is a good workout for memory and recall, but it requires a lot of mental energy during the night, and time that could probably be more profitably spent on maintaining/resetting intent to get lucid, and doing other night-work things like WBTB and WILD attempts, and SSILD. It also results in much lost DJ detail, and less time during the day spent thinking about dreaming.
After a couple days of highly focused and consistent day work and intention, I've had now several long nights of VPAL (vivid, present, alternate-life) dreams. Last night in particular had 7-10 wakings, each time with a new set of dreams to recall and review. Several were incredibly VPAL level. Day work and recall has always been strong for me, but night work admittedly has been fairly weak. Night work yields results, and so I must put much more energy there. That requires being well-rested and getting to bed on time, another historical weak point for me.
So. My plan includes re-reading the classics (LaBerge's ETWOLD, Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep) and re-arranging my practice to follow their recommendations. I've already started ETWOLD, and (re-)discovered great nuggets of LD wisdom right from the start. LaBerge is really big on goal setting and tracking, and that's something I've always been pretty weak on. The last time I set a solid goal in February, I had 6 LDs in 10 days and got multiple TOTMs, a pretty inspiring result.
I think part of the issue with not achieving as much lucidity as I'd like (other than the obvious focus and motivation factors) is that I've become so familiar with the dream state over these almost 3 years of LD practice, that it's not surprising to me any more to wake up with the memories from 3-10+ dreams every night. Also, my dreams have become increasingly mundane and un-dream-like: while 2 years ago I would often have "wild and wacky, bizarre" dreams at least as a part of every night, in the last year or 1.5 years my dreams mostly consist of having believable adventures or just hanging out with people in mostly waking-like situations. Oh the dream signs are still there, to be sure, but they're increasingly more and more subtle. It will take a very highly honed reflection ability to get that "lucid spark" going again consistently.
In terms of my Unified Theory, Attention and Recall are pretty high, but Reflection seems to be lagging a bit. So I plan to re-instate the Tholey/LaBerge "intention/reflection" moments throughout the day, like I did at the start of my practice. I'll bring back daily prospective memory targets, and also paying a lot more attention to things like focus/intent.
Focusing on dreaming before bedtime has yielded excellent results, so I'll leave time in the evenings to stop work and get off the computer, and read LD materials and think about dreaming and set intent and expectation for the night.
I'll update my status here in this thread, sort of a repeat of my "2015: year of..." thread for 2016, except almost half of 2016 has passed already.
I will have lucid dreams tonight, or very soon!
After a couple days of highly focused and consistent day work and intention, I've had now several long nights of VPAL (vivid, present, alternate-life) dreams. Last night in particular had 7-10 wakings, each time with a new set of dreams to recall and review. Several were incredibly VPAL level. Day work and recall has always been strong for me, but night work admittedly has been fairly weak. Night work yields results, and so I must put much more energy there. That requires being well-rested and getting to bed on time, another historical weak point for me.
So. My plan includes re-reading the classics (LaBerge's ETWOLD, Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep) and re-arranging my practice to follow their recommendations. I've already started ETWOLD, and (re-)discovered great nuggets of LD wisdom right from the start. LaBerge is really big on goal setting and tracking, and that's something I've always been pretty weak on. The last time I set a solid goal in February, I had 6 LDs in 10 days and got multiple TOTMs, a pretty inspiring result.
I think part of the issue with not achieving as much lucidity as I'd like (other than the obvious focus and motivation factors) is that I've become so familiar with the dream state over these almost 3 years of LD practice, that it's not surprising to me any more to wake up with the memories from 3-10+ dreams every night. Also, my dreams have become increasingly mundane and un-dream-like: while 2 years ago I would often have "wild and wacky, bizarre" dreams at least as a part of every night, in the last year or 1.5 years my dreams mostly consist of having believable adventures or just hanging out with people in mostly waking-like situations. Oh the dream signs are still there, to be sure, but they're increasingly more and more subtle. It will take a very highly honed reflection ability to get that "lucid spark" going again consistently.
In terms of my Unified Theory, Attention and Recall are pretty high, but Reflection seems to be lagging a bit. So I plan to re-instate the Tholey/LaBerge "intention/reflection" moments throughout the day, like I did at the start of my practice. I'll bring back daily prospective memory targets, and also paying a lot more attention to things like focus/intent.
Focusing on dreaming before bedtime has yielded excellent results, so I'll leave time in the evenings to stop work and get off the computer, and read LD materials and think about dreaming and set intent and expectation for the night.
I'll update my status here in this thread, sort of a repeat of my "2015: year of..." thread for 2016, except almost half of 2016 has passed already.
I will have lucid dreams tonight, or very soon!
via Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views - Attaining Lucidity http://ift.tt/1T6LKRo
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