Indie's progress

[IndieAnthias]

Hello all you excellent people out there. I'm a frustrated dreamer and I could really use some help. I can't seem to have a lucid dream no matter what. My troubles seem to be deeply rooted and I probably need some expert advice. I've known about lucid dreaming for about 5 years now and have read everything about it I can get my hands on, so I'm pretty well-versed in the concepts and methods, and whatnot. I've had some real measurable success at things like improving my dream recall, but I've been in a wicked dry spell for many months now. I managed to obtain one brief, fleeting moment of lucidity once but that was over a year ago. I need to keep myself from going too far with this introduction. I am fighting the urge to write my whole life story. I think the challenge is partly because my mind just operates in some weird alien way. I have never met anyone who really thinks like I do. But I'm willing to go into any detail and answer any questions about my history and experience for anyone who is willing to help me out in any way they see fit. I am not willing to accept defeat in this matter, hopefully this shows from the fact that I have been at it for 5 years without giving up. I have read enough about the subject to believe that it is real, and that there is absolutely no reason to believe that I am somehow incapable of learning the craft like anyone else. My guiding principle is that even if it takes 80 years, so be it. I'm willing to try anything.

[Alucinor XIII]

There's a lot of things that can hinder dream progress. One may be stressing over it too much. Another could be stress, or distractions in your life. If you are on any drugs, that may affect you as well. I've found that when I've been smoking pot regularly, my dream skills in general go down the drain. Not enough sleep, or irregular sleep patterns, can muck up dreaming as well. Most of our dreams take place in the late hours of sleep. I remember reading that if you slept 8 hours, then 50% of your dream-time are in the last couple hours. What techniques are you using atm?

[RebelSeven]

Your fortitude is impressive and important! My best suggestion would be to focus on WILDing especially if DILDs has failed you so completely. In a WILD you have control over the transition and though success may be limited you are more likely to get a small victory and therefore feel like this is all worth it.

[IndieAnthias]

There's a lot of things that can hinder dream progress. One may be stressing over it too much. Another could be stress, or distractions in your life. If you are on any drugs, that may affect you as well. I've found that when I've been smoking pot regularly, my dream skills in general go down the drain. Not enough sleep, or irregular sleep patterns, can muck up dreaming as well. Most of our dreams take place in the late hours of sleep. I remember reading that if you slept 8 hours, then 50% of your dream-time are in the last couple hours. What techniques are you using atm? Yeah that's one of the reasons my progress bounces around so much, because I kind of move around a lot. I'm pretty nomadic, it seems. I have a hard time getting into routines. But I'm staying put for the next couple months so I want to use this time to launch another campaign for lucidity. I wouldn't say I'm stressed out over life but I probably am guilty of stressing too hard over LD'ing. No pot right now for situational reasons but I probably drink too much alcohol lately, though. I'm going to give that a rest so I can concentrate on this dreaming effort, I've decided. I generally get my full 8 hours. I'm a champ at sleeping. As for techniques, I'd rather tell you about what was going on when I was really into it last year than what I'm doing now because right now... it's not too much. I had 2 months last year when I made extra dedicated efforts to achieve lucidity. The first was in May. I had finished school and was crashing at my parent's house for the month because I was planning on doing some long-term travel later on. I decided to treat it like a personal lucidity camp. Like I said school was over, so I had no real distractions. I read lots of material on dreaming and it was often on my mind throughout the day. This was the first time I was able to see what it felt like to take deliberate control of my dream recall. By the end of the month I was up to 2 or 3 dreams recalled per night. I was trying MILD every night, and making what I considered to be futile attempts at WILD, knowing I probably wasn't ready for that yet but thinking it couldn't hurt to try. I've always had terrible results with WBTB. There's a knife edge when I wake up at night that if I don't cross, I go instantly back to sleep, or if I do cross, I can't get back to sleep at all. It's really annoying. Anyway by the end of May I was feeling frustrated. The actual last night that I was sleeping at my parent's house I was rewarded for my effort. I was having a rough night of really shitty sleep. At about 5AM I got fed up and got out of bed and laid on the floor. I eventually fell into very light sleep and had my first and only lucid dream. It wasn't much to speak of, and it didn't last long at all. But I woke up and had a little party for my success. Then I took off on what turned out to be a crazy journey for the next 6 months, and digressed back to not thinking about dreaming, and having sporadic if any dream recall. Fast forward to November. I ended up spending that month in Italy living with a family and helping them with their olive harvest. I'll spare you the details but I stayed each night by myself in a cozy little guest house. I used this month as lucidity camp part 2. During this month I had by far the best dream recall of my life. I read through the book Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming and was doing all the exercises as they came up. It was a great set-up but I failed completely to obtain lucidity at all. Your fortitude is impressive and important! My best suggestion would be to focus on WILDing especially if DILDs has failed you so completely. In a WILD you have control over the transition and though success may be limited you are more likely to get a small victory and therefore feel like this is all worth it. I love that quote in your signature That really sounds like a good idea, I think I'll give that a try. Like I mentioned above I have this notion that WILD is a more advanced technique that I think I need to get into once I've made more progress, but I guess there's no reason for this, since I've read extensively about it. I actually have had better results with WILD than any DILD, which has been a flat brick wall for me. My main problem with WILD is what I said before. I know it's not really useful to attempt WILD when I first go to bed because I'm several hours away from dream activity, but later in the night I have that whole either-can't-get-back-to-sleep-or-fall-asleep-instantly thing. I do like to attempt WILD though. I find it pleasurable when the little dreamlets start to appear. I always fall asleep during this part, though. But it's fun to do. Oh yeah, I want to mention a technique I want to try, see how it sounds to you. Everyone seems to want to come up with their own technique, lol. Anyway I had this one experience once. Sometimes in my dream journal I write out "lucid plans", where I construct in detail lucid dreams I will attempt when I am able to do so. Anyway one day I wrote out a plan for a lucid dream, and that night I had almost the exact dream as a non-lucid dream. So that gave me an idea to come up with a dream plan and write it out by hand every day, and include certain dream signs and the act of becoming lucid. So I have the dream story in my mind, I just haven't tested out my idea of writing it by hand every day. I think I'll start that today.