Thanks! That's a good question. While most successful attempts feature caffeine, not all caffeine attempts are successful. Maybe 60 percent? I think I'm partially to blame because of the lousy wbtbs. There are times when I drink the latte and just black out before I have the chance to properly wake myself and think about ld goals. I guess increasing the dose might work in those cases, but I never know when I'll get insomnia.
You're really on fire. Crongrats on all the LDs!!! So, what's your lucidity hit rate with the latte's? Im still getting lot of failures with caffeine. Though it does increase dreaming and recall, it's the LDs I want!
@ CL Thanks! This seems like a great way to practice recalling details of waking life from in the dream. Thomas Yuschak also posited that this could be a good exercise for improving dream recall since it helps you get more and more used to information passing freely between the dream world and the waking world It would be really nice to be able to activate this kind of exchange more often. I think there's lots of stuff we can nicely mix from both worlds - from remembering what your goals are and how to more efficiently approach them in the dream, to actually employing ld acquired self-control and detachment (during challenging moments) and solving day life problems with a calm, focused and more creative mind. @ Folgelbise Thanks for reading and the kind words!
Yeah, totally agree on the B6. I'm fascinated by it in spite of its complexity / uncertainty of effect particularly because I had an early LD (maybe #26) from pre-bed B6 that was extremely high quality. Until some of the really good galantamine + menthol lucids that I had later, it was the gold standard for me for a while. Thanks for mentioning the valerian combo! This sounds like a great one to try and makes a lot of sense for combining with the B6.
Thank you guys! @ Xanous I love playing traffic too. It never acts normally for some reason. Oh, yeah, I remember this cool entry where you slowed down time and played with the truck. It was really good! @ CL Thanks! Good to hear I am not the only one having unusual animals in their dreams. Wow, that's a very interesting encounter - the kangarant. Sounds like a cool dream and the beginning with the mountains was really nice. I don't know about you, but it's a very weird feeling to dream about some of these animals (if not in most cases!). Hey, I was curious about your B6 wakefulness. Does this tend to occur pre-bed or do you get the wakefulness during your WBTB? For me it seems B6 is most effective when taken pre bed, but in larger amounts and by itself like 100 mg (at least nowadays), it would cause me to wake up frequently during the night and then have trouble falling asleep. We've talked about this - it's a pretty complex vit that plays an important role in the synthesis of 5 neurotransmitters. The levels of some shouldn't be that high while we sleep, so this is certainly causing disturbances and influencing dream contents. But then, it does boost recall a lot and increases vividness (along with rebellious DCs). If I add some valerian, the wakefulness effect is reduced but at the expense of awareness. Trade off as with everything. It's weird that with pre bed intake the effects last pretty long too (at least for me). @ Highlander Thanks! Well at least you didn't have to clean up after those pesky noisy animals! This is a pleasure I usually leave for my non-lds, where cute animals start pooping all over the place. Weirdly, it hasn't triggered any lucidity.
Thank you so much your time in sharing all of the excellent info NyxCC!! You are very much appreciated!!
Cool dreams, although FA's can trick. Well at least you didn't have to clean up after those pesky noisy animals!
Right! Apart from lots of practice and the right attitude, do you know what I was thinking might help build up the confidence in the long term? I have to at some point go over most lds and make for personal use a very good printed list of these things I have already done in lds. So it will be something like "tasks done" - summoned item A by doing this, turned aggressive DC into a friendly one, etc. and then "tasks in progress" (notice the carefully selected label - because they will be completed!) and then contemplate on what more can be done on these. If one then reviews from time to time this skill set, maybe it will help speed up reaction time whenever a challenge arises or we need to complete another task. What do you think? Great idea! Man, I had something like this going when I was first starting out but it just kind of got away from me over time! It's got so many positives to it. I mean, first off, you're reminding yourself what you've proven you can do. Second, it keeps these skills fresh in your mind so that you've thought about them recently when you have your next LD. And then it gives you a great list of new goals to try. I especially like the idea of cross-linking it to DJ entries where it's been done, or maybe just a reminder of the tag you used in dreams where this skill was employed? Thanks for the great idea!!
Thanks! I hope go be able to react like this should the situation repeat. Good luck with your next encounters.
Cool animals! Hey, what'd the elephant-like creatures look like? They didn't have pouches like a marsupial, did they? I once had a lucid with creatures that looked like a cross between an elephant and a kangaroo. They were like this: This animal is about 30-feet tall, gray-skinned like an elephant, but with the powerful hind legs and dainty forelimbs of a kangaroo. It has a marsupial pouch but its head has tusks and a modest trunk. The head is elephant-like, but sleeker and longer than an elephant's. Just in case there's any synchronicity there. The original link: The Kangarant - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views I was also very amused by your infinite credit card scheme for solving all of the world's woes. Hey, I was curious about your B6 wakefulness. Does this tend to occur pre-bed or do you get the wakefulness during your WBTB?
Awesome dream and great discussion in the comments! I think that your daytime meditation/breathing practices are having a huge positive impact on your lucid dreaming, Nyx. I love that you took a moment in the dream to contemplate your life and do a few breathing exercises. This seems like a great way to practice recalling details of waking life from in the dream. Thomas Yuschak also posited that this could be a good exercise for improving dream recall since it helps you get more and more used to information passing freely between the dream world and the waking world. And then, of course, when you were done with all that contemplation... you had your daylight! The skills involved in meditation and lucid dreaming are so interrelated. IMO. Great stuff! And BTW I think I'd act the same way if all of my unlikeable/hostile DCs looked like Rachel Weisz rather than Samuel L. Jackson!
Congrats on the LDs. I like how you managed the FAs. I know those can be really tough. I love playing traffic too. It never acts normally for some reason. Cool stuff with the animals too.
Nice LD music! It's always the best. I like how you handled the zombies. I see a theme amongst us here. Love it.
Unintentional feedback loops like your cat example seem to be more in my non-lucids (with the exception of getting something that is a little different than what I was looking to create) That's great! This possibly means that your dream control is really good. Perhaps I am too actively involved and should take half a step back and definitely put more focus into the surroundings as you and CL have suggested. Yes, you could experiment and see if there are any differences in dream lenght, vividness or stability. I know this technique has been very effective for CL, where he would take a moment to fully immense in the dream as a way to boost its vividness. I think it's working pretty well after reading his entries. And some more thoughts on the feedback loop and the other things you asked about. The cat example I gave is an extreme case of the feedback loop. I think this process is ongoing during the entire dream but may not be as pronounced. You are simply noticing that which is in front of you so part of your attention continues feeding its existence, even if you don't register an explicit thought. I have another example which relates to this. In this recent dream I faced a number of elephants that started roaring menacingly. On the conscious level, I tried to control the situation and just wanted them to shut up, but I felt/registered that on a deeper level a part of me was reacting negatively to their roaring, and I was thinking about them doing so, which in turn fed more attention to them behaving like this and it was not until I had another thought to override and interrupt the entire process that they stopped. I think this feedback loop is also the reason why we can fail at dream control, especially when trying to change things - when we are looking directly at something we want to change, we uphold its existence by perceiving it. But then this is not all bad - because the feedback loop may be one of the pillars of stabilization. The more attention we give an object by examining all of its properties the greater our focus on a single object and the more attention we pay to it will help solidify its existence. Thoughts in conception Similarly to in real life when we are engaged in an activity and random thoughts pop up from time to time, this also happens in dreams. Some of these thoughts may not succeed in manifesting, especially if we nip them in the bud. By the way, sivason mentions being aware of such thoughts in his dream yoga class. Some of these thoughts will start manifesting before you even knew there were there - a transparent contour of an object or a DC. I had this lion coming into existence in front of my eyes like this, but I managed to ignore him so he didn't fully materialize. Associations Well this has to do with how information is stored. I have no idea how all this data is organized but association plays a role there. Our brain loves to make something unfamiliar into something familiar. Perhaps the memories and impressions that are strongest (enforced by repetition and emotions) can then easily provide a blueprint for such changes. This might explain why we constantly run into familiar DCs in dreams. I guess one can contemplate on the topic of associations and memory even further, but I think I'll stop here and allow dreams to teach us more on the subject.
Thank you so much for your detailed, helpful response! And good point about previous tips from CL! I think it is time to go back and review them! I'm talking about moods, emotions, associations, thoughts in conception, and the feedback loop Moods/emotions: are almost always good/positive, if at times overly elated. associations, thoughts in conception: what did you have in mind on these please? feedback loop: sometimes I set up the scene I want through a kind of feedback loop perhaps. I see 'this' but I want 'this' instead so it materializes usually...but once in the scene that I want, my feedback loop seems to be put on the back burner...Unintentional feedback loops like your cat example seem to be more in my non-lucids (with the exception of getting something that is a little different than what I was looking to create). Perhaps I am too actively involved and should take half a step back and definitely put more focus into the surroundings as you and CL have suggested. As you suggested, this is probably ending some of my dreams quicker than they need to. I think my awareness pendulum has swung too far towards self-awareness even though that is what Sageous teaches and I do believe is important to have a lot of waking life memory...
@ Highlander Thanks! I liked the part about the cat in the next dream and how you got good vibes from the sunny scene, plus the (B6?) bitches. Rachael Weiss. (Now I'm starting to visualise!) Lol! Yeah, that's my brain on neuro chemicals. And what a better to promote visualization than sexy ladies? @ fogelbise I would love to be able to DILD at the very beginning of the dream frequently and I think I have only gotten semi-close to the beginning(except for WILDs/DEILDs of course) In addition to the classical wild/deild and dream experience/awareness/DS recognition, another case to consider would be a post wild attempt dild. For example, if you do the preparations for a wild and go through the wild process but for some reason (nerves, laziness, sleep) give up at the end, missing the transition and possibly becoming lucid within a few seconds of the dream developing. This by the way may help reduce some instability issues if you initially shortly engage in the dream non-lucidly. Most of my LDs are probably more imbalanced towards the self and may cause them to be shorter at times (my take is that too much focus on surrounding can cause you to lose lucidity but continue in an NLD whereas too much focus on self can return you to your sleeping body, but upon review it looks like Mzzkc posits the opposite). What are your thoughts Ok, I have a lot of thoughts about this, let me try to get them organized. Apologies in advance for the length, typos, or if adding more confusion. I think that in general this is a somewhat good view of how things are but is not the only aspect to consider. I most strongly support the part about paying attention to the dream/dream elements. The process of perception is a bit more complicated than we think because there are a lot of less detectable parts of our consciousness that also take place when we are experiencing the dream. We may or may not be aware of them, but can train to be more aware of them and control them eventually. I'm talking about moods, emotions, associations, thoughts in conception, and the feedback loop (there probably is also ton of other stuff I have no clue about!) The feedback loop plays a great role in maintaining the existence of current dream and can also lead to funny multiplication effects. For example, you see a cat and think 'oh, cat' and since your thoughts give rise to dream reality soon there may be more than one cat here. So, you are maintaining your world by thinking of what you are perceiving. Then there is focus. The better and clearer focus on that world, the more stable the dream will be. In the moments where you start distracting yourself with too much thoughts that are not related to what is in front of you and then the surroundings change or you might wake up, etc. Idleness. This is similar to the lack of focus because you stop feeding the dream with your attention. So, for me the lack of anchoring (dream focus) isn't necessarily the corresponding antonym of focusing on your self (from real life) if I understand correctly what's said in the link. But then I have to agree that focusing on your body certainly doesn't do any good during an ld. I also like to refer to another conversation between you and Canis that I happened to remember having a look at some time ago: Boring fragments then Bed Launch Wild, too short. - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views Originally Posted by CL Daniel Love made the observation that in a WILD, you're taking your awareness and watching the dream get built up. Therefore it's normal to work the hardest at enhancing and stabilizing the dream. Likewise he says that in a DILD, you are in the fully-formed dream and watching your awareness form. So presence of mind and hanging on to lucidity are liable to be the biggest challenges. ^^ Very well said. Since we start with very little out there, it may be additionally challenging to feed the illusion of that which is not there. Finally, I also would like to add that in the case of wild, especially with some people like myself (insomnia and lattes), the way that we are biologically programmed to normally sleep and be awake may play a role. Sometimes I am just too mentally alert even if not focusing on my body, the mental activity is surely sending signals that it is time to wake up and start doing stuff. One more thing before I end this post for which there are certainly word count limits. Pay close attention to the end of your dreams. If the dream fades more slowly, that might be indicator that you will be able to chain-in dream or DEILD later on.
@ CL Thanks! It's a good sign I think when these dream control techniques become almost like reflexes. You're bound to really believe that the tech will work if it's something you "just do". And of course, that makes it all the more likely to succeed! And that was some great DC management there at the end! I hope that I can remember to bring this kind of positive energy and confidence to my next encounter with a threatening DC. Right! Apart from lots of practice and the right attitude, do you know what I was thinking might help build up the confidence in the long term? I have to at some point go over most lds and make for personal use a very good printed list of these things I have already done in lds. So it will be something like "tasks done" - summoned item A by doing this, turned aggressive DC into a friendly one, etc. and then "tasks in progress" (notice the carefully selected label - because they will be completed!) and then contemplate on what more can be done on these. If one then reviews from time to time this skill set, maybe it will help speed up reaction time whenever a challenge arises or we need to complete another task. What do you think? @ Highlander Thank you. It really is a great experience. The good part about music in dreams is that the sound may but is not required to come from a particular object, thus it can come from anywhere (and hopefully anytime!)
Ooh, just a quick clarification on Mzzkc's thread...he may have put it backwards in the OP under "Bringing it all together" because in the following post of the same thread he states the opposite: http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-cont...ml#post1792173
Thank you so much NyxCC for all of those ideas! Mine have been getting longer in general (or at least the really short ones are a lot less frequent) but I can see that there is room for improvement when I read yours above. I hope you don't mind some follow-up questions/comments. - where in the REM cycle the ld occurs - if it's in the beginning of a later REM cycle (I don't time these things btw) I would love to be able to DILD at the very beginning of the dream frequently and I think I have only gotten semi-close to the beginning(except for WILDs/DEILDs of course). I assume this improves over time with heightened awareness and a solid feel for the dream world. - being able to archor in the dream (it still remains a challenge with wilds mostly due to the fact that I am quite wakeful when I do them, but sometimes it works quite well) This reminds me of Mzzkc's suggestion <link: http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-cont...damentals.html > for balance between self and surrounding. Most of my LDs are probably more imbalanced towards the self and may cause them to be shorter at times (my take is that too much focus on surrounding can cause you to lose lucidity but continue in an NLD whereas too much focus on self can return you to your sleeping body, but upon review it looks like Mzzkc posits the opposite). What are your thoughts? - visualization exersices. I have been practicing visualization exercises for 15-20 mins where I imagine or at least try to think about simple backgrounds, objects, etc and especially trying to hold the image or thought for as long as possible. I think this relates to what we do in dreams, so may be giving dreaming an extra boost. I like this and have to make time to do this more.
Music always seems to sound interesing in lucid dreams. It is great when you can influence it and become a part of it like you did. I liked how you made the Zombie characters less threatening too.
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