Natural LDs with almost no technique

[lvlindless]

I find that techniques for inducing LDs can sometimes get a little too complex, which in turn sabotages your chances of having one. Seems like most techniques skip over the "confidence factor." I find that when I'm TOTALLY confident about having an LD, I'll have one that very night with little or no technique. So what I did a few months ago was I built up my confidence every single night to the point where I didn't doubt for even a second that I wouldn't have an LD, and I simply went to sleep. That night, sure enough I had an LD. On the second night, I did the same thing. I really wanted to see if I would have an LD two nights in a row, as I had NEVER had that happen before. So that night, I built up my confidence again and bam, another LD. I didn't have one the third night, because I was convinced that I proved I could have an LD with only confidence and nothing else. So here's my... NON-technique, if you will. 1) Imagine yourself becoming lucid, and imagine it as a future event. Imagine that it really IS happening tonight, and that you can't do anything about it or stop it. 2) Go to sleep with this same confidence right away, before you begin to lose it through negative self talk (inner dialogue). Once you've got the idea in your head that you're becoming lucid no matter what, don't dwell on it. Just let it go, and go to sleep. Don't come back to this idea, no matter what. Empty your mind and sleep away. You'll fall asleep pretty fast. -------------------------------- (I believe that when you repeat an affirmation too many times as you're falling asleep, they can actually hurt your chances of having an LD. You should only say something once or twice with REAL emotion, because just mindlessly babbling "I'm going to realize I'm dreaming, I'm going to realize I'm dreaming, I'm going to realize I'm dreaming..." will actually cause you to lose motivation and might actually cause you to lose the belief that you will. Saying something once, but with an emotional response should plant the seed in your subconscious that you are confident about whatever you're trying to do.) I would love for anyone to try this technique and tell me how it goes. It's worked numerous times for me, so it should for you as well. Comments would be appreciated. =D

[Alex D]

You know, I find this way works best too. The confidence thing is so important with lucid dreaming and people just forget about it. Dream control for example, people just ned to believe what they want will happen and it most likely will.

[Truffles]

Wow! I had one of my first LD's last night and this was like...exactly what I used to get it! I just said to myself, I'm going to have a lucid dream and went to bed. Sure enough, I had one! Great idea!

[refresher 711]

wow that sounds really good!!! i will try it out and let u know how i get on! thanks!

[elsanpedro]

Yes this worked for me once with no preparation. That night, I just had a feeling that I was going to LD and I got very confident. Lately, I get very enthusiastic to go to bed though I think I'm more hoping than actually firmly believing that I will LD. Thanks for the post lvlindless, I'm going to start this right away!

[lvlindless]

Oh, I was hoping Admins could put this topic in the "Attaining Lucidity" Center of the forum. I made it in General by mistake. x_x

[Clairity]

Moved this important topic to "Attaining Lucidity" as requested. .

[Cammy]

Your right, i think this is the only thing you need to have LD. I find confience is EVERYTHING in real life as well. You wont get no where without any. Im going to try my best to get as confident as i can tonight

[Blaze Haze]

So how do you feel about RC's then? Should we still do them? And by imagining that we become lucid, should I imagine being in a certain place in my dream when I become lucid?

[lvlindless]

So how do you feel about RC's then? Should we still do them? And by imagining that we become lucid, should I imagine being in a certain place in my dream when I become lucid? Well, I only do RCs when I really believe I might be in a dream. I don't do them on timed schedules, because that sort of dulls your mind and you really don't question your reality as much. It just sort of becomes a zombie thing like "Oh, it's 3pm, time for an RC." When say... Something really weird happens in real life. In a situation where you just go "Woah... that's strange..." Those are the only times I do RCs. So at most, I do about 5 RCs a day. But when I say imagine become lucid, I mean just sort of seeing a dream sign - like... a talking cow or something. And then you go "Oh... I'm dreaming." You can even throw in an RC in the visualization. It shouldn't take more than 30 seconds to get it down, and to go "Okay this is what I'm going to do later in my dream."

[Snowy]

I think this method (or non method) raises an extremely important point. People quickly get the impression that lucid dreaming is difficult and that they need to do all sorts of complicated methods to induce it which then in turn makes them more unlikely in some circumstances. DON'T get it into your head that lucid dreaming is hard. One often reads many posts of people not being able to LD and this can reinforce the fact so often its a great idea to just read people's successful lucid dreams so you build up a mental idea of lucid dreaming being something regular and easy. What is important is being able to remember your dreams though because otherwise you won't remember if you do have a lucid dream. However, just make sure you don't get it into your head that remembering dreams is "difficult" or "complicated". If you think it is, then it often will be. Great point lvlindless Confidance all the way!

[Kromoh]

Well, not that I'm raining on your parade (otherwise, I support what you said) Actually, that can be seen as (part of) the MILD technique, which bases on memory, confidence and subcoscious induction mostly. Still, I believe it is the one that works best. Actually, I tell everyone tyo use it, no matter what other technique they try. LaBerge himself enjoyed this pretty much for what I reckon. Thanks for bringing that up

[lvlindless]

I think this method (or non method) raises an extremely important point. People quickly get the impression that lucid dreaming is difficult and that they need to do all sorts of complicated methods to induce it which then in turn makes them more unlikely in some circumstances. DON'T get it into your head that lucid dreaming is hard. One often reads many posts of people not being able to LD and this can reinforce the fact so often its a great idea to just read people's successful lucid dreams so you build up a mental idea of lucid dreaming being something regular and easy. What is important is being able to remember your dreams though because otherwise you won't remember if you do have a lucid dream. However, just make sure you don't get it into your head that remembering dreams is "difficult" or "complicated". If you think it is, then it often will be. Great point lvlindless Confidance all the way! Exactly. I know this from experience, because the first LD I ever had happened completely out of confidence, and it was about 20 minutes long! I read a little something on some website about LDing, and I knew the basics. Reality checks, dream recall, dream control, etc. I didn't really care too much for those, so that night I went to bed FULLY expecting an LD. I didn't follow any sort of technique, I was just emotionally charged with confidence. I've introduced LDing to alot of my friends, and it took them forever to have just one. They looked at it as a hard and very tedious state to achieve, and because they thought of it this way, it was! I know for a fact that it's very easy to become lucid. You just have to believe it's easy, because it really is. Alot of topics on this site, and alot of users try to trick you. I've noticed how many people go "AWW WILDING IS SO HARD!" and some people say "IVE BEEN TRYING FOR A YEAR TO HAVE AN LD! AHHH!! ITS NOT WORKING IM GIVING UP!" It's total bullshit, because it is NOT hard to have LDs, even at will! Laberge can have what... 4 - 5 LDs... PER NIGHT! Come on, just by reading that you KNOW it's not hard. 5 LDs a night, while you're sleeping! How difficult could that be? I'm going on a rant, but all I'm trying to say is is that it's not difficult. It's very very easy once you know how.

[Blaze Haze]

Well, the only hard part I can say about this is to forcibly make confience out of nothing. If you can teach me a method to make confidence, then I'll have this method set. I read this post yesterday, went to sleep w/ not much confidence, then I woke up this morning without an LD, but inexplicably I have more confidence about having one tonight. I think a few more days will go by before I confirm this method to be true, for myself that is. I definately agree though. Lately I've been doing 50 or so RC's a day. I had an alarm that would go off every 15 minutes and I would constantly be reality checking, throughout the whole day. Ive got about 1 LD since July 1st. When I first began LDing, I spent little to no time caring about RC's and stuff. I just wanted an LD and expected one because I did the bare minimum of what the threads on the forum said and that should've meant I was going to have one. I had about 1 or so a week and in my 1st month I had 10 LDs. My first LD took a week since my first dream journal entry began. I definatley agree w/ this method though.

[Blaze Haze]

...actually one more thing. You cant exactly teach confidence, I'm aware of that. What I mean is, what method do you use to gain confidence? I find it difficult to tell myself I'm goin to have an LD because I always go to sleep at night wanting and LD and that's all there is on my mind, but it never occurs, or at least not often.

[Kromoh]

well, you can't tell your mind that you want to be "conscious" - your mind won't understand it otherwise, try to get as conscious as you can, and then tell yourself that "this is what you want to be like in a dream" it should work way better than whatever you have tried

[HandicapReborn]

Just reading this boosts my confidence! Like I started thinking about this also and although I havn't had a LD yet, I know that my dream recall is A LOT better! But it seems to be a VERY logical method!

[lvlindless]

...actually one more thing. You cant exactly teach confidence, I'm aware of that. What I mean is, what method do you use to gain confidence? I find it difficult to tell myself I'm goin to have an LD because I always go to sleep at night wanting and LD and that's all there is on my mind, but it never occurs, or at least not often. There are plenty of ways to build confidence. Some of mine are... 1) Looking through old dream journal entries in which I had LDs. KNOWING full well I have had them before, and reading through them to get that feeling re-anchored, my confidence shoots up immediately and instead of doubt it's more like "This is gonna be so fun!" 2) Acting confident. Even though you might not feel confident, if you act like you picture a confident person would act, you start to feel confidence... out of nowhere. It's weird. Like that phrase, "Fake it till you make it." 3) Listening to an audio track that boosts your beliefs. Here, I uploaded one for you guys. Listen to this right before you go to bed. http://rapidshare.com/files/42249313...ilder.mp3.html

[Torcher]

Too often I've forgotten to do just this. Thanks for this post!!

[Blaze Haze]

Have you ever had an LD in the middle of the night, but your recall isn't good enough yet to remember what happened, only the vague feeling that it did? Yeah, it really sucks. Im sure your method worked on me, but I can't concretely say it did yet. I did about two actual RCs yesterday, but I spent most of the day just trying to get a confident, almost excited feeling the whole day, based on memories of old LDs, and then trying to amplify it to the point where I can tell myself I'm gonna have an LD that night, but with a more aware conscious that can capture the whole sentence and embed it into my subconscious, if you can sort of understand where I am getting at. I did read my dream journal entries, but nothing is better than just remembering it as best I can, because I can almost visualize the dream and the emotion of becoming lucid again. Thanks for the MP3 too, I'll give that a try.

[Mes Tarrant]

Hey man, thanks SO much for this thread, this worked wonders for me last night. So simple, too. I'm putting a link to this thread in my DJ.

[lvlindless]

Have you ever had an LD in the middle of the night, but your recall isn't good enough yet to remember what happened, only the vague feeling that it did? Yeah, it really sucks. Im sure your method worked on me, but I can't concretely say it did yet. I did about two actual RCs yesterday, but I spent most of the day just trying to get a confident, almost excited feeling the whole day, based on memories of old LDs, and then trying to amplify it to the point where I can tell myself I'm gonna have an LD that night, but with a more aware conscious that can capture the whole sentence and embed it into my subconscious, if you can sort of understand where I am getting at. I did read my dream journal entries, but nothing is better than just remembering it as best I can, because I can almost visualize the dream and the emotion of becoming lucid again. Thanks for the MP3 too, I'll give that a try. Yes, I've had that happen. Waking up, and recalling only being lucid, and no other dreams. It's kind of annoying, but it's good at the same time. What's important is that you build real confidence, and not just saying to yourself you're confident because you read the topic. You really have to become totally sure of an LD coming. Some things are still important, like good dream recall. If you can't remember your dreams, whats the point of being lucid? RCs are important, but only genuine RCs where you really question your reality. Can't be a quick RC like "yah yah, RC time." You should be going "Woah... am I really dreaming? Is this... a dream?" Don't let the vividness of real life get ya. Sometimes in my dreams, I won't do an RC because I'll be convinced that it's "Real Life" because it's so vivid. When I wake up I want to punch myself. The audio tape should help, because it gets you in that mindframe of "Nothing's stopping me from having a 30 minute LD tonight, and I'm gonna do it!" So yeah, keep trying to build the confidence.

[Blaze Haze]

Oh my god, bro this is awesome! I just woke up, I havent really looked through all I wrote in my journal, but I must've had like 3 or 4 different dreams last night, ALL LUCIDS. This TOTALLY fuckin works, I've been lucky to have 2 in one night. I just had 4 of them. I Listened to that recording while I was stoned last night and it worked perfectly, apparently. This is crazy Im doin this everyday now! Thank you SO much

[Missmj]

my first LD are without any preparation too i got it after 2 times being kick out from my dream thou... so yup this without preparation aree really work..you guys should try it :p

[BeautifulDreamer]

Do you think trying this in conjunction with my sleep deprivation technique would work? Both are 'non-methods' somewhat, and it takes me forever to fall asleep without having stayed up. I'd imagine that I'd get even more vivid dreams and great LD's because of the REM stackup.