Sensei's Ideas, Thoughts, and Ramblings

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

Spoiler for LD:

I am walking down the street working and someone tells me that Voldemort is after me. I freak out and somehow think of the whole "LDing" thing that I had read about. I start to think about it and then bam! I am in a white room like the one in the matrix and I know that I am dreaming. I look at my hands and they are all messed up, almost like I can't focus on them or am focusing on something beyond them. I remembered some of the things that they said about talking, spinning, observing, I pick up a black rock and start spinning, saying "this is a dream" I also remembered that they said that it is hard to stay in LDs at first. I feel myself waking up and I look intently at the rock, it is jet black and has silver speckles on it. I wake up and am back at my work, I go home and everyone tells me to go downstairs where Voldemort is waiting for me, I jump down (Holy crap just thought of something new :3) and wake up.

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:

I am on a trip away from home, the dessert around me as dry as anything and the only thing that I can think of is this girl that has grown attached to me. She is short and nice, but very shy, I did not get a name because she didn't talk much. The city around reminds me mostly of Favela (like in modern Warfare, and real life). It seemed like I was in the dream for about a week, so I have no idea how long this actually lasted.

Me and this girl are trying to get away from the group so that we can talk and start going around this abandoned building. We are exploring empty corridors and just having a good time. The rest of the group caught up to us with some sort of tour guide and I stopped paying attention to the girl for one second and she ran away because there were too many people. I chased her down and that is when things changed in my mind.

I haven't followed a girl like this for a while, but she seems awesome. Why haven't I been going after girls? I thought. Wait! I am married, that is why I shouldn't be looking for a girlfriend. Then this must be a dream! I stopped and looked around. There were two roads ahead of me, one that the girl just took on the left, and an identical one on the right (everything still seems like Favela from COD MW2)
I shouldn't chase the girl down now that I remembered that I am married, I should go the other way. I turned right.

I jump over a fence after the turn and find myself in a backyard, the grass is perfectly green, the houses seem to be made of mud, but they are shining somehow, everything is extremely vivid. In the back yard there is a Rose, it was the most beautiful plant I have ever seen. The stem and leaves were the darkest black and the rose the brightest red. It was perfectly centered in the square backyard, and I looked at the house next to me as well. Every backyard had the same layout with the same rose in both directions, and it seemed to go on to infinity.

I felt myself waking. It had been forever since I had read about dreams, I couldn't remember what to do to stay in a dream. I thought maybe spinning was one so I started spinning very slowly, but as I did an old man came up to me from the front yard.

"You must be like the flower if you wish to stay" He said, and then went back the way he came. I stopped spinning and looked at the beautiful flower again. Then I awoke.

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
07/6	II

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.

http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-sign...m-journal.html

http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-sign...ompendium.html

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:
http://www.dreamviews.com/induction-...me-ld-god.html
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.

very very nice!:D
It's stunning how monkey simple DILD exercises are, but make a powerful weapon to achieve LDs.
Their elements are connected in a nice way, might draw a flow chart about that.

Agree with you about SSILD. I treat SSILD not as a tool to become lucid, but a tool to improve my dream quality.

Very interesting read. Thanks BB.

Thanks LoualB and bobble. :) If you guys have any questions or anything feel free to ask, this is a good place for discussion and things like it. :P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LouaiB

very very nice!:D
It's stunning how monkey simple DILD exercises are, but make a powerful weapon to achieve LDs.
Their elements are connected in a nice way, might draw a flow chart about that.

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feel the need to clear one thing:
I didn't mean your techs are "monkey simple" as in not effective. On the contrary, I added a lot of your tips and tricks to my arsenal of LDing! They are easy, smart and effective :D
Thnx a lot for sharing!

Fantastic! Thanks a lot for sharing all your thoughts and experiences. That was a great read. I shall go through it again and take some notes. I really love the idea of setting much higher goals and going for one goal at a time. And the thought of those "fake memories" sounds really intriguing - I shall try that! :)
Thanks again, this is a glodmine!

Thanks Benni.:) if you would like more experiences I have had with fake memoriesiIcan post them.

LouaiB
I am not offended. I forget to say that my goal is not to LD every night no matter what. I want to find a way to LD that i can do with putting a maximum of 10 minutes a day so that I am not wasting time. I simply cannot put 30 minutes a day into a hobby for the rest of my life. :P but I want to LD for the rest of my life.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BrandonBoss

LouaiB
I am not offended. I forget to say that my goal is not to LD every night no matter what. I want to find a way to LD that i can do with putting a maximum of 10 minutes a day so that I am not wasting time. I simply cannot put 30 minutes a day into a hobby for the rest of my life. :P but I want to LD for the rest of my life.

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Good to know:)
Seems like SSILD really is perfect for you! only a 5-10 min WBTB required. Even better, the NovaDreamer 2 is finished, but is yet to be distributed(might take a while:( ), and they added a feature that allows you to install programs on it (like apps on smartphones). I bet they'll add a program that is for DEILD, an alarm that wakes you up when it detects REM sleep, and the alarm would stop after you have woken!:D Very awesome! I hope they don't overprice it. They may not do that, since REM Dreamer is a big challenge to them

You're welcome!

Quote:

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if you would like more experiences I have had with fake memoriesiIcan post them.

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Oh yes, that would actually be great! :)

Just one question concerning the consistency of your sleep schedule: I get the idea of the positive effects of a consistent sleep schedule, but I was wondering about those 4-6 natural awakenings you were talking about. What do you actually use them for? DEILDs? Affirming your intention of becoming lucid? Trying to recall your dreams? Or a mixture of all those things? I usually just drop down some notes on what I can recall which is usually between 4 and 8 dreams/night and then I reaffirm my intention.

BB,
Thanks so much for putting this together. It is really priceless information for the up-and-coming LDers.

One thing I think that would really add a bunch to this is your actual daytime and nighttime practices. Like "A day/night in the [LD] life of BrandonBoss." I know you mentioned before a special technique for trying to maximize LD opportunities, in order to catch the most FAs, get out of the void, etc. (something related to teleporting?) Something I think that the more successful LDers learn to do is maximize all possible opportunities every night, all through the night, each waking, etc. Exactly how you go about doing that would be great!

Fake memory dream control: this seems to be really close in spirit to what sivason does, as reported in in his epic party & sex dream. He kept directing the flow the way he wanted it to go by saying / thinking that such a direction was already what everybody already wanted, just verbalizing it.

louaiB
I am not a big fan of buying things or wearing things for LDing, so no supplements or anything. :P

Fryingman
Thanks! Yes, Sivason is quite a beast. I will add that bit later. I forgot that that isn't standard for LDers. :P

New Apocalypse on Awareness
Weeee! Thought of something on awareness today. Actually been thinking about it a lot since sageous mentioned it the other day. I have been on a downslope lately since my daughter recently decided to only sleep in the mornings and not night (don't judge my parenting skills on half the story). The big problem here being that I work in the mornings. The last 3 days I've been sleeping all right and instead of using intent to wake myself up, I decided to use water, since I heard recently that intent and will power are similar to muscles, and so I didn't want to overuse it when I have a bigger supply of water than intent. So I use water, and get up and have a few OK dreams. Kind of wandering around doing whatever. It started getting more aware for the last 3 days (like normal). Last night was the 2nd or 3rd day of a good sleeping schedule of at least seven to eight hours of sleep, but!!! I forgot to drink water last night and I forgot my intent to wake up, which should have left me with waking up alarm clock at 6:45 and have issues with dream memory since I didn't wake up, but this is not the case. I woke up 5 or 6 times last night, after every vivid long conscious dream. So what was the difference? Why did I remember waking and have such long dreams?

Conclusions
1)
general dream awareness
Sleeping right, eating right, and constant exercise are 3 good things for a healthy mind and body, I normally do 2 of those, but the sleeping right has been in trouble since baby being born. I realized that the quality of all dreams are normally the same (I think that the ones that you are aware and have bad quality are NREM dreams), the only difference then, is your awareness of the quality, and if you are aware enough in dreams, you will easily remember every awakening, because it is you making the decisions. I am "there" in my dreams. I don't make decisions that are not my own. I wouldn't cheat on my wife in a dream like that, I wouldn't kill someone. Unless of course my mind has been altered like it is in some dreams, you are in a messed up universe or a different one, you aren't married or your wife doesn't exist, and when someone hits on you, you try to pull up a reason why not, and you come up blank. You are about to kill someone and you think "why wouldn't I? it is just a video game" It isn't like watching, it is like changing lives for a bit. My dreams have always been like this, but I used to have a max of 1 per night until I learned about LDing (check history above). So this awareness is something that is natural for me, but if I don't get enough sleep, the majority of my dreams seem to shift to almost watching what is going on, I might have my senses, but I am not really "there". In the dreams I am there, I remember when I wake up. looong conclusion #1.

2)
awareness of states
I know that my day time awareness seems null, but honestly, LDing is normally on in the back of my mind. Most people have 1 obsession or 2 at any given time, your mind constantly revolves around that game, idea, or object. I am always thinking about some new fancy, normally multiple ones, from video games to sports, my mind gets stuck on one (right now I am on COD and Ping Pong, normally a more active sport, but it is cold outside) or more. I am normally constantly thinking about something to do with studying as well (right now it is unity, fire, and prodigal's brother), so here are 6 things that are a constant loop in my head, they just keep popping up. I add LDing in there for the last year and a half. It isn't "all I think about", but it is always there in the back of my mind with the rest, and it too cycles to the front a lot. I know for a fact that if you ask me in my dreams if I was dreaming, I would normally say "of course I am dreaming", but a lot of times I know I am dreaming, but don't do anything about it. Honestly this should be in the list of things I do about LDing, I add it to my list of "daily obsessions" if I have a spare moment I go to them in my head or on a computer. I study, pay attention to, hear new ideas from everything about (for instance I have epiphanies about the Bible, LDing, Ping Pong, and COD when I watch most TV shows). It is very strange, but I would recommend that everyone Add this obsession. This is something that a lot of people do, especially at the beginning, and that is why you will see someone shoot from 5 posts to 500 in a few months, they are obsessed with LDing. So why do people still not have a high success rate? This isn't normally the thing that they are lacking, they normally lack a consistent sleep schedule and low stress

More about stress and my stupid circle
I have something out of this that will help me and hopefully I can cut out some non LDing nights.
If you look at this, and if I look at this, I can see that I should be able to LD every single night, but I normally LD about 5 days in a row and then take about 2-4 days off. In those days off I normally work on my sleeping schedule and expectation, and then I normally know the night that I am about to LD because I can feel when I have enough expectation and awareness (looking at yesterday night's dreams, i can easily say that I will LD tonight if I get enough sleep). A lot of times in the 5 days on LDing, I do miss out on sleep schedule, and that normally makes me worry a bit about my LDs, and then I miss one night of LDs and I have low expectations and stress! I would probably be able to LD that next night if I didn't have that.

So I need to cut out stress, and when I don't LD I need to not worry about it!

Maybe you could talk about the micro WBTB a bit more? Haven't heard of this and not sure what you mean by it.

Micro WBTB and the Phase

As I said before, I wake up after each dream if my awareness is high enough.

I believe that for a WILD, or for setting intent, you need to be in "the phase". I used yo believe that this was a point between waking and sleeping, like a line graph (my mind works in graphs and things, it is easier to keep data), or like this:
http://optional.is/required/wp-conte...-diagram-1.png
With one circle of awake, one of asleep, and the phase is where they meet up. But then I remembered those times that I woke up and slipped right into a dream without losing a second of time, but still now aware, and the fact that the lines between awake and asleep are also blurred when you stay up too long, so it should be easy, but we all know that awareness is lacking when you do that. Also when I wake up from an LD, I can normally slip right into the phase and not lose any awareness since it was already there from previous dream. So the graph for this is more like:
http://theaudacityofcolor.com/core/w...ry-Colors1.gif
Red is awake
Blue asleep
Yellow awareness
Violet is slipping into a dream without losing time and staying unaware (some people haven't felt this, happens a lot when you hit snooze like I used too)
Orange is staying awake and aware (we have all been there, insomnia)
Green is DILD
Black is the phase

When DEILDing from an LD, you are going from asleep to awake with awareness in tact, that is why it is so easy.
In WILD, you are trying to go from awake to asleep and keep awareness. If you enter the phase, you will slip into a lucid dream. This some times leaves you with less awareness than you need, but if you have a good lucid routine you can gain it. Sometimes you are in the phase and not quite in a lucid, one or two sense working, but not all and you will have something like a hypnic jerk (can also happen when not aware, but in "awake-asleep" conjunction). In order to stop this I learned how to use my body in a dream without moving my normal muscles. Just imagine them moving until you can feel your muscles. Look at your arm now and move it, now try to move it with the power of your mind. It should stay still. If you are in a dream it will move! I normally move my hands together and stabilize with my mind and I then lose feeling of normal and go straight into body. Pretty cool. A little while there that you can feel both. I want to try and feel two in a dream and then add more. I have felt two in a non lucid.

So:
SSILD with micro and the phase
So I wake up after a dream. I stay awake until I feel aware enough (differs on sleep schedule, times and such), I am looking for that feeling.
Going for green and staying away from orange.
You want to always lean towards more tired rather than more awake and keep the dream state going. The phase is the goal, but if you fail, you want to land in green or violet, not orange. SSILD helps this. If I stay up too much, or dont feel aware enough, then SSILD will make me lose awakeness, raise awareness and raise asleepness (:P whatever the kids are calling it). paying attention to your senses is a way to concentrate on something that will make you fall asleep and something that raises awareness. If you do it too soon you will lose consciousness and fall asleep before you awaress kicks in. Wait too long and you are too awake.

Make sure that you go from the lower end. Start with 3 minutes and then make adjustments as needed. After a while you should "feel" how awake and asleep you are.

triple threat
I have a ritual after SSILD and most FAs. Any time I go to sleep really (besides original sleep).
When i close my eyes to go to sleep I make sure that I do my teleportation technique. So if I hit the phase, I teleport. If I have a FA instead of a waking, I would just teleport. If I have a DEILD instead of FA, I am already in my phase and can just teleport.

The teleport is easy, close your eyes and believe that you are somewhere else. Remember where you were. Not where you want to be. :) (look up my fake memory tech for more info).

Hey BrandonBoss, I really like this thread. I'm currently trying these micro WBTB's with the water method. I got some questions about the water method. Is it possible to wake up about six times with drinking water everytime you wake up? If I drink more water I'll wake up earlier won't I? There are some people living close to me and they'll likely wake up if I have to go to the toilet in the middle of the night? Is there a possibility to perfrom this water techinque without having to go to the toilet?

Hmmm...the only way I can think of is a bedpan. Bleh.

Unless it is the bathroom sounds that make you not like it. If you sit down to pee, you shouldn't makes as much noise. And then just flush the toilet on your last awakening or wait till morning.

If you use the water to wake up and then don't pee, it will only wake you up once I believe and then when you wake up in the morning you have pain! Or wetness. Either one sucks.

Hey don't knock the bedpan :). If it's a long way to the B/R then using one may help in keeping the "micro" part of micro-WBTB.

Try setting intention for wakings. When I'm really motivated for lots of recall and set intention to wake after every dream, I wake up a lot, usually up to 4-5 times. You can combine intention with water as well. I don't like the water so much though because I wake up really fast, and even with a bedpan it's sometime too much activity to get back to sleep immediately, especially if you add in working on recall and recording.

I didn't read your thread in the last two days (so pardon me if I ask anything that's already answered up there), but a question just popped up in my mind: When you say "consistent sleep schedule", what exactly do you mean by that? Sleeping the same amount of time every night? Going to bed at the same time, getting up at the same time or both of those combined?
And another little question: what (besides a probably quite steady dream recall) can I expect after sticking to a very consistent sleep schedule for let's say 3 months? Oh and just one more thing: I usually drink water before going to bed (as has been said above as well) and I usually perform one WBTB session per night. So is this WBTB session supposed to be at the same time of every night when talking about consistent schedules or can I vary that independent of my sleeping and rising times?

Yesterday I tried micro WBTB with the water method again. I don't know if it's thanks to drinking water but I was able to wake up naturally once before having to wake up. I didn't feel the need to go to toilet though. Well I think I read that I should do about six of these micro WBTB's per night to do it effectively and to maximaze chances. Waking up with alarm clock ruisn my Dreams so I won't do that. But am I supposed to awake 6 times during the night with drinking water (over and over again)? Last night I woke up at about 4.50 a.m and i had to up at 6 a.m. I want to do micro WBTB's a lot more often. Should I drink more water before going to bed? I drank about 0.7 liter last night. Unfortunately the intend method wasn't reliably in the past so I think I won't use it. Are there maybe even more option to wake up naturally and more often during the night?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MHT

Yesterday I tried micro WBTB with the water method again. I don't know if it's thanks to drinking water but I was able to wake up naturally once before having to wake up. I didn't feel the need to go to toilet though. Well I think I read that I should do about six of these micro WBTB's per night to do it effectively and to maximaze chances. Waking up with alarm clock ruisn my Dreams so I won't do that. But am I supposed to awake 6 times during the night with drinking water (over and over again)? Last night I woke up at about 4.50 a.m and i had to up at 6 a.m. I want to do micro WBTB's a lot more often. Should I drink more water before going to bed? I drank about 0.7 liter last night. Unfortunately the intend method wasn't reliably in the past so I think I won't use it. Are there maybe even more option to wake up naturally and more often during the night?

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Water is more of a guide, sort of like using bumpers when bowling. It's a thing to get you started, but over time you should get better and not need it.

You wake up, even if ever so slightly, after every dream, and you just simply need to accustom yourself to the mindset of intending to raise your awareness at these times. It's just all our lives we've been used to just simply rolling over and falling back asleep during there intervals, and you just need to work your way off that habit.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by imrossed

You wake up, even if ever so slightly, after every dream, and you just simply need to accustom yourself to the mindset of intending to raise your awareness at these times. It's just all our lives we've been used to just simply rolling over and falling back asleep during there intervals, and you just need to work your way off that habit.

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I already tried that with mantras like "I'll wake up after every dream and remember it." I don't think it worked so far. So I definetly wake up after every dream? Do I rather need to concentrate that I'm gonna wake up after every dream (with mantras for example) or do I need a stronger will? Maybe I just thought taht I'd rather like to fall asleep again and forgot that I woke up.

Yea.you wake up for a second after every dream. Normally you just forget it though, just like you normally forget your dreams. I will post more on all this later. I am WBTBing. :P I just beat ² scavenger hunts in my dreams! :P

Wow this thread is a boatload of useful information! Just one thing though ;)

The quote in your first post should read, "Aim for the moon; even if you miss you’ll land among the stars" It gave me a little chuckle when I read it! :)

Great information! Thanks for putting your time into creating this :) It will help me with my SSILD attempt tonight!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MarineRecon

Wow this thread is a boatload of useful information! Just one thing though ;)

The quote in your first post should read, "Aim for the moon; even if you miss you’ll land among the stars" It gave me a little chuckle when I read it! :)

Great information! Thanks for putting your time into creating this :) It will help me with my SSILD attempt tonight!

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Ha that's good! Another spin-off I like is the 'motto' of the imperial academy (Star Wars) "Shoot for the stars, Miss by Miles".

Great stuff in here - thanks BB!!
Forgot to post that!
And you were the first, I heard the pretend-remembering from - and I managed to remember a room next door with a dartboard, darts and all last night - and for the first time did a baby step towards my main LD-goal: Testing, if I can train for it lucidly and see an effect!
I threw some several times, and all felt natural and I am overjoyed!
Thank you!
And next time - I really have something to remember - and can further it out!

Thank you for putting this together! I just wanted to point out just a few of my favorite parts. :)

• the awake/asleep/awareness circles and how it simplifies analysis of the combinations
• that when you have solid fundamental skills and timing in place, the difference in consistency can come down to: sleeping schedule/enough sleep, expectation, and lack of stress.
• the early DEILD tip you found: "If you wake up from a dream, you can just play dead and go back to the dream."
• your history, especially the early LDs...it just reminded me of my early excitement! :)

*Can you add more about your teleport technique and explain the mechanics of the triple threat?

sorry I have been "away" haven't had much chances to type or anything, but I should be adding to this thread quite a bit. All my ramblings about LDing.

@imrossed
I love star wars
Maybe I should stick to that quote instead. I kind of forgot about it. Ah, the good old days. I used to bike to the library and get a bag of 15 star wars books. I read soooo much back then. I can read way faster now, but I don't have anywhere near as much time.

Thanks everyone for your kind words. :P

@ fogelbise. I shall explain some more, but first, I have something that is on my mind that I would like to add to this in particular.

Quote:

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general dream awareness
Sleeping right, eating right, and constant exercise are 3 good things for a healthy mind and body, I normally do 2 of those, but the sleeping right has been in trouble since baby being born. I realized that the quality of all dreams are normally the same (I think that the ones that you are aware and have bad quality are NREM dreams), the only difference then, is your awareness of the quality, and if you are aware enough in dreams, you will easily remember every awakening, because it is you making the decisions. I am "there" in my dreams. I don't make decisions that are not my own. I wouldn't cheat on my wife in a dream like that, I wouldn't kill someone. Unless of course my mind has been altered like it is in some dreams, you are in a messed up universe or a different one, you aren't married or your wife doesn't exist, and when someone hits on you, you try to pull up a reason why not, and you come up blank. You are about to kill someone and you think "why wouldn't I? it is just a video game" It isn't like watching, it is like changing lives for a bit. My dreams have always been like this, but I used to have a max of 1 per night until I learned about LDing (check history above). So this awareness is something that is natural for me, but if I don't get enough sleep, the majority of my dreams seem to shift to almost watching what is going on, I might have my senses, but I am not really "there". In the dreams I am there, I remember when I wake up. looong conclusion #1.

2)
awareness of states
I know that my day time awareness seems null, but honestly, LDing is normally on in the back of my mind. Most people have 1 obsession or 2 at any given time, your mind constantly revolves around that game, idea, or object. I am always thinking about some new fancy, normally multiple ones, from video games to sports, my mind gets stuck on one (right now I am on COD and Ping Pong, normally a more active sport, but it is cold outside) or more. I am normally constantly thinking about something to do with studying as well (right now it is unity, fire, and prodigal's brother), so here are 6 things that are a constant loop in my head, they just keep popping up. I add LDing in there for the last year and a half. It isn't "all I think about", but it is always there in the back of my mind with the rest, and it too cycles to the front a lot. I know for a fact that if you ask me in my dreams if I was dreaming, I would normally say "of course I am dreaming", but a lot of times I know I am dreaming, but don't do anything about it. Honestly this should be in the list of things I do about LDing, I add it to my list of "daily obsessions" if I have a spare moment I go to them in my head or on a computer. I study, pay attention to, hear new ideas from everything about (for instance I have epiphanies about the Bible, LDing, Ping Pong, and COD when I watch most TV shows). It is very strange, but I would recommend that everyone Add this obsession. This is something that a lot of people do, especially at the beginning, and that is why you will see someone shoot from 5 posts to 500 in a few months, they are obsessed with LDing. So why do people still not have a high success rate? This isn't normally the thing that they are lacking, they normally lack a consistent sleep schedule and low stress

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While these are both true, they are not quite the "big picture" that I am wanting, so I shall add to them, and explain them in detail.

Dual Awareness
Everyone says "you need awareness, but what the sheol does that mean? I have concluded before that there are 2 types of awareness "general dream awareness" and "awareness of states".

General dream awareness
Now, if you have general dream awareness, this is what some would call "conscious dreaming" You are actually in the dream it is not a hazy experience. I theorized before that normally we have general dream awareness when lucid and we normally realize when we wake up from it because we are aware and when the dream ends, it ends our reality. If you ever woke up from a dream like "Ah!? that was a dream!?" It was probably a dream with awareness in it. It is easier to become lucid in these dreams, as you are living through them and you are thinking like a rational human. Sometimes the dream universe throws something at you and explains it in a weird way, but with false memories and with the whole universe telling you that you that nothing is wrong, it makes sense that you would carry on. These are the dreams that you wake up from and think "I noticed something was wrong, but didn't know what that would mean." If you lack awareness of states, then it is impossible to get lucid, no matter how aware.

awareness of states
This is simply being more aware of dreams and whether or not you are dreaming or not. I shall explain. If you are aware of states when in a dream, you are lucid. We have this issue so much though "It seemed like a dream that I knew I was dreaming, and that I wasn't really in control" tons of threads like this and questions like "was I really lucid". technically yes, you were lucid, but it wasn't an aware one, so this gives you the feeling of not being in control, or you may not be in control! you may be watching the whole thing.
signs that you are getting a high awareness of states:
DCs becoming lucid and leaving
DC: Ah I am dreaming! see ya!
You: lucky person is having a lucid dream. I wish I could

becoming lucid and carrying on with the dream.

dreams being mentioned in your dreams.
You: Going to the lucid seminar tonight!
DC: have you had any lucids lately?
You: nah, I seem to have trouble, but I am getting there.

weird goals
You: I am dreaming! what do you do when dreaming?? I forget! I know! You eat dirt.
grabs dirt and shoves in mouth

not caring about lucidity
You: I am dreaming.. meh.
carry on with dreaming about work

losing lucidity
You: I am dreaming... what were you saying again?
wDC: I was just talking about the...

This means that you probably need to work on recall and dream awareness. People that often have aware dreams before LDing will have an easier time with this and will normally start having lucids as soon as they hear about lucid dreaming, because a small part of state awareness crept in. This was the case for me, but getting enough awareness to have lucids consistently takes more than just 1 vivid a night, you need to actually devote yourself to it.

conclusions
What this means to our techniques is a whole host of awesome things.

RC and DJing
RC takes care of the awareness of states and DJing adds dream awareness. It is important to note that RCs can be used to check and see if you are dreaming, but the primary purpose is to make you think about dreaming more so that it seeps into your dreams. lack of practicing recall is why there are so many people with "false lucid dreams"

mantras
getting an idea in your head is a good way to get it stuck in there for later. This is why my mantra is "I'm dreaming", because when my mantra works I don't want it to be "when I become lucid I have long and vivid dreams" Heck before I get done with the mantra I have already missed my chances for stabilizing and lost the dream. :P When it works it is straight and to the point. I'm dreaming, I now know what is going on.

Dream signs
Bring things into your head and noting that they happen in dreams a lot. This should raise both awareness. In my experience it raises my dream state awareness more. So even though the dream signs never "get me lucid" it raises my awareness. So it is good.

WBTB
increases general dream awareness, and gives you a chance to play with the states a little more so that things that you think in waking have a better chance of showing in dreams. mantras and visualizations in this time are far more effective

WILD
Taking your state awareness into a dream without losing it, from waking.

DEILD
This is obvious. You are taking your state awareness (normally from your preciouse dream) into your dream again. This is why when you DEILD from a non lucid, you sometimes just have the same awareness as the non lucid, even if you remember the phase part, you don't remember that you are in a dream.

SSILD
honestly it is just WBTB, but it messes with you awareness. I use it about once a week when I feel like it will work. If I use it every night it never works. :P it can do what WBTB does but more so. Completely useless alone though.

ADA
messes with your awareness of surroundings and dream state, because as you check the surroundings at all times, you are supposed to be thinking about dreams. This should raise you "general awareness" and seems like it should raise your "general dream awareness" as well, definitely raises "awareness of states", seems like it would need more in the way of general dream awareness, so if I was using this I would want to focus heavily on recall and dream awareness.

ADA/RC
This is what a lot of people are calling hukifs gravity RC. Using this, you should be able to hit state awareness to the max because you are always doing an RC. So it should make it so that as long as you have some general dream awareness, you should be able to get lucid. It takes a while though. :P

Visualization meditation (sitting and imagining that you are lucid, or that you are doing lucid type things)
Should raise state awareness, seems like it raises general dream awareness if you incorporate dreams that you have had or lucid dreams that you have had in to your visuals.

Meditation
Seems to straight up raise state awareness. People that already have really good recall, could seemingly just use this to get there first few LDs if they just used it a few weeks in a row. Might be the best way to trial run LDing without committing.

Lucid dreams.
I know that it is takennout of context, but the simple rule seems to apply to a lot of things. He who has it shalk be given and he who has not, what little he has shall be taken away from him. What I am saying is that lucid dreams seem to raise the amount of lucids you have in and of themselves. It is the perfect amount of both awareness's, so you get experience and this makes each subsequent LD easier (most of the time.

Also! State awareness is something that you can getnin dreams if something from a dream sticks out as "dreamlike" and you become lucid. This is just state awareness rising durin a dream. Sometimes state awareness is high enough that at the beginning of a dream you are already lucid.

Also! General dream awareness is something that seems to increase the longer you are in REM. Note normally remembering the last dream of the night. Becoming lucid right when the dream is ending etc. So if you have state awareness and become lucid, you may gain general dream awareness when you become lucid or later in the lucid. Many things can make you lose this though. Like getting very involved in a dream. You get better at keeping lucidity with practice.

Also! Please ask me some more questions! Will answer fogelbise now...
The triple threat is simply what I call it because it is the same feeling and thoughts going through your head for all three. Actually it might be more.
Beforei go to bed visuals is for DILD.
If Iwake up in the middle of the night and want to WILD or DILD back in, I just do that.
If I have a FA I do it.
If I wake up from an LD and just want to DEILD back.

So it is the same thing. My mantra "I'm dreaming." Along with visualizing myself teleporting away and LDing. No matter which place I get at, my night time visuals are the same, but all roads lead to LD. :D hope this explains it. If you need more I can make a long detailed point by point one though.

Using the list above and/or the dj system, you should be able to figure out what you need for LDing. Remember that techniques that you do take a month or so to kick in, and a month or so to kick out. :P

****************edit*************
For me, I normally am lacking GDA (general dream awareness) because of lack of sleep. The longer that you spend on GDA, the slower it takes to leave you. The longer you are a way from it, the harder it is to get back. Dream state awareness seems to be able to come and go without much issues.

Great post!!
Enjoyed reading about normal reasoning in normal dreams being intact, and awareness levels in normal dreams.
Just last night had an astonishing example of complex reasoning, I find at least, for a dream.
Just about lately I had major hickups about people telling a person, who only remembered her LDs, what normal dreams supposedly would be like.
"Woe me my rational mind is dead, and nothing makes sense, all is bizarre and unusual."
Not so.
Could be that I feel an effect of meditation by much better insight in retrospect, what had been going on.
I suspect some people don't remember the details, and what you say - that false memories and dream-logic are present, and it was not "stupid" to not notice.
Rather indeed one is not aware enough and memory.
Whatever that means, exactly.

Great thread - do keep going by all means!!
Still loving your pretend memory dream control!

Fabulous post, BB! I am experiencing increasing spikes in both dream and state awareness, but they're not coming together at the same time!

What I'm really interested in is your detailed current practice:

+ when and how and how often and how long do you think "I'm dreaming" during the day?
+ what else do you do during the day?
+ what do you do before bed? What bedtime intentions do you set?
+ what do you do on each waking? What more intentions, how do you decide between choosing WILD vs. DEILD vs. DILD
+ how do you do your micro-WBTB, do you have it timed, or do you monitor your level of drowsiness, etc?
+ how do you recommend getting in to teleporting while still at a pretty low LD count (say 20ish :) )? Or do you recommend not doing that until higher counts with more reliable denser LD frequency?
+ what again is your teleporting approach?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BrandonBoss

The triple threat is simply what I call it because it is the same feeling and thoughts going through your head for all three. Actually it might be more.
Beforei go to bed visuals is for DILD.
If Iwake up in the middle of the night and want to WILD or DILD back in, I just do that.
If I have a FA I do it.
If I wake up from an LD and just want to DEILD back.

So it is the same thing. My mantra "I'm dreaming." Along with visualizing myself teleporting away and LDing. No matter which place I get at, my night time visuals are the same, but all roads lead to LD. :D hope this explains it. If you need more I can make a long detailed point by point one though.

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Thank you! :D I think this is genius to have a "go to" approach for all three situations! That should make it easier to remember and give more opportunities to not miss those chances that are within grasp. Awesome!

Thanks steph and fryingman. Fryingman. Make sure that each day you spend time on both types of awareness. The one I am always lacking is GDA (general dream awareness), if you don't get enough sleep, or have too much stress, this lowers first.

+ when and how and how often and how long do you think "I'm dreaming" during the day?

Well on average I think it any time that I think about dreaming. I want to have it in the back of my head at all times, but I have changed this for a little while. Right now I am on a looong LDing lack and I need a lucid, so I decided to pick up the gravity RC way more than ever and make it my own. I couldn't seem to think about*gravity "all the time" like hukif suggests, so I am conditioning myself into it. When at work right now I have an alarm going off every minute in order to remind me to think of gravity. I try to keep it going for the full minute. If I do this long enough I am hoping that each time it hits the minute mark I will still be thinking "I'm dreaming" and paying attention to gravity, at least somewhere in my mind since it is supposed to be something that is in the back all the time. When I get it there every minute I will keep increasing the time until I know that it is in the back of my mind. :P so right now I repeat it thousands of times a day since I hit about 50% of the minute marks for 5 hours of work and I probably have it repeated every other second. :P so a lot. This is extreme, but I want to get this working really bad. I have commited to doing this the next 30 work days at least. When not working it is getting to be like every minute or so, but before this I did it every five minutes or so and that didn't work bad. :D

+ what else do you do during the day?
Right now gravity RC. Visuals. Mantras. Telling myself that I am the best ever and things like that.song about LDing. Relate everything I read or watch to LDing.
+ what do you do before bed? What bedtime intentions do you set?
+ what do you do on each waking? What more intentions, how do you decide between choosing WILD vs. DEILD vs. DILD
+ how do you do your micro-WBTB, do you have it timed, or do you monitor your level of drowsiness, etc?
+ how do you recommend getting in to teleporting while still at a pretty low LD count (say 20ish :) )? Or do you recommend not doing that until higher counts with more reliable denser LD frequency?
+ what again is your teleporting approach?

Hah! All these I can answer in one question. :3 because they are all similar in my way.
Ok. So I lay down. I start feeling my dream body. Now at this point when in a dream or in waking, what body you feel at this point is your dream body. Whenever you. Start feeling your body, it is really your idea of your body. So I imagine myself falling asleep and waking somewhere else. I keep up my mantra the whole time and I keep the "dream feeling"
It is always a feeling that I go for for micro wbtbs, so I dont know how long. I only DEILD after LDs, and WILD and DILD are chosen for me this way. This is a way to teleport as well.

More on:
teleporting
My first 70 LDs I spent a lot of effort on flying because I didn't think that I would be able to accomplish any goals if I couldn't fly! I was not a natural flyer, no help from DCs constantly harassing me and telling me that I couldn't fly. After I got that down I used my method of doignthings like walking for a while. After about 150 LDs I started teleporting like mad. Lucids and non lucids. I still have issues with goals, but probably because I have too many. I accomplish a goal prolly 3 times a week when I am LDing (I am on a slump right now, but I will get all the LDs tonight) it is easy to accomplish most, but goals for competitionsbor toty are hard to rememeber because they dont come from my desiresm trying to change that). :3

I had awhole thing written about teleporting methods, but I am gonna make a thread for that soon. I will just give you the one that is just what I do with the DILD,WILD, and DEILD. :P

Teleport tech:
I lie down and go to sleep. :D then imagine where you want to go and teleport. It basically an in dream WILD.

******edit*******
Thanks fogelbise. I am glad you think it is genius. I wanted to make sure I didn't miss any chances to WILD, DEILD, or DILD, so the only way to make sure I miss no chances is to have the same set up. It took me a while to get exactly what I needed to do down. I have specific things that I do in order to keep my mind active yet not too active that insomnia ever sets in, but I dont tell people exactly what I do, because that isn't part of the "system" that is something that will have to be specific to the individual, and will take time to find your own way.

One of those things is SSILD, if I feel like I can't fall asleep. Backflips if I can't feel my dream body enough, forgetting my body if I am thinking too much about my dream body and can't sleep, counting if I am too tired. One thing I always always do is my mantra. This is why I try to get people away from SSILD because it is only 1% of what I do when getting myself into the right mindset, and info it once a week at most.

^^ Great great great BB I'll read it through several times, thanks! When I'm not focusing on work (which takes my total attention since it's heavy mental work), I'm now basically *always* thinking about LDing via ADA/RC. I'm doing location and adding in gravity....not sure of splitting the attention on focuses is bad, it may slow me down, but I want to make sure I have both bases covered. I have consciously noted gravity [a feeling of lightness like fainting or I could float away] in a dream twice, once this week, and low location awareness a few times and high location awareness 2 nights ago [in the dream I'm explicitly wondering where I am, in relation to physical landmarks I know in waking life, and even ask a DC where we are relative to such-and-such a landmark. I also do Tholey/LaBerge reflection/intention, and daytime MILD.

My last two LDs were from "those things don't belong here" thoughts, lower location awareness, but not me explicitly wondering about where I was. They were both on the "fuzzy" side of general dream awareness, and were earlier in the sleep cycle than most of my "lucid while waking up" moments. I have had several strong general dream awareness dreams this week, not fuzzy at all but quite clear, I'm me, and I'm in control. Yet I don't know I'm dreaming! So getting these two to go together is the thing I need to figure out. Maybe it's just a matter of time. In any case recall this week has been great and I think that's a good sign.

I too am an "obsess" sort, usually though not at long as this LD obsession :). This is one for the rest of life I think. I will hold it as my primary thought during the day as long as it takes to reach Hukif-levels :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BrandonBoss

I had awhole thing written about teleporting methods, but I am gonna make a thread for that soon. I will just give you the one that is just what I do with the DILD,WILD, and DEILD. :P

Teleport tech:
I lie down and go to sleep. :D then imagine where you want to go and teleport. It basically an in dream WILD.

******edit*******
Thanks fogelbise. I am glad you think it is genius. I wanted to make sure I didn't miss any chances to WILD, DEILD, or DILD, so the only way to make sure I miss no chances is to have the same set up. It took me a while to get exactly what I needed to do down. I have specific things that I do in order to keep my mind active yet not too active that insomnia ever sets in, but I dont tell people exactly what I do, because that isn't part of the "system" that is something that will have to be specific to the individual, and will take time to find your own way.

One of those things is SSILD, if I feel like I can't fall asleep. Backflips if I can't feel my dream body enough, forgetting my body if I am thinking too much about my dream body and can't sleep, counting if I am too tired. One thing I always always do is my mantra. This is why I try to get people away from SSILD because it is only 1% of what I do when getting myself into the right mindset, and info it once a week at most.

---

I think that I first heard that from you, finding your own way, and I agree. :) Take other framework and piece it together to suit you...it's amazing how different each person's approach can be and still be effective...or rather how different some approaches have to be to be effective for each individual. But as you and others have pointed out, there are basics (fundamentals) that I think tie them all together in some way. I tried what I imagined to be the closed eye teleport with several successes after hearing you mention it so I think this is something that would fit in with my practice quite well. I focused on FAs for a while but found it pulling my attention away from other priorities and I think your triple threat is a good way to start catching them again (and more DEILDs, etc). I also hear you on SSILD, I have been slowly using other things and saving SSILD for certain attempts. I was getting over 50% success early on while using SSILD (along with day practices), that I did start to rely on it. I assume, to catch as many FAs as possible, that you attempt the closed eye teleport no matter how sure you are that you have woken up (even if it feels like time to get up for the day)?

I wanted to post in this thread for a long time but only now realized I still hadn't 0o

You're one of the people whose mindset I greatly admire around DV: I know the first reaction is to look at how the person is achieving their lucid dreaming rates, but I tend to give more relevance at how the person is achieving his/her lucid dreaming practice. From all the posts around, a definitively key-word I'd use for your journey so far is hard-work. You mention several techniques, sometimes a small shift in perspective regarding induction, but always in the lines of "I was working on this, and then working on this, and testing this, and developing this". This makes you a great example in terms of "you can achieve lucidity even if you used the least effective way, providing you're consistent in your practice".

One also very relevant aspect of your methodology of lucid dreaming, that I wish people would pay huge attention to, is the focus on journey vs focus on the arrival, focus on the process vs focus on the result. Lucid dreaming is so ephemeral for quite some time, that if you are one of those that doesn't learn to love the process you will never learn to appreciate the results, as small as they be at first. Lucid dreaming, frequent/long-lasting/solid will only (imo) be achieved with constant work on a group of aspects related to dream knowledge, awareness, and overall mental clarity/memory. Can't stress how important these principles of habit formation are for people who want to become a life-long lucid dreamer, and your posts show that perfectly :)

Nice that you took the time to post this, I'm sure many new lucid dreamers will save much frustration by taking some lessons out of your own experiences ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zoth

One also very relevant aspect of your methodology of lucid dreaming, that I was people would pay huge attention to, is the focus on journey vs focus on the arrival, focus on the process vs focus on the result.

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Yes, this! You have to love your dreams, especially the non-lucid ones. I personally consider any night with decent recall a successful night now, lucid or not. Lucid is icing on the cake, and a tasty icing it is. Yeah I'm not perfect, I get a bit cranky if a no-lucids spell extends to several weeks, but probably one of the most important epiphanies is that we are each of us alone responsible for our (lucid) dreaming results, so must make a habit of seriously asking and evaluating the question, "am I doing all that I know I should be doing to promote lucid dreaming and dream recall?".

http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-cont...-teleport.html
I made a thread about teleporting and talked a little about the triple threat. It is easy to find if you go over there, I put a spotlight of sorts on it.

Thanks Zoth. :) I hope it helps. If it doesn't help other people, I know it will help me having all my thoughts in one place.

Zoth and Fryingman. It is a lot like staying in shape. If you make it a project with an end in sight you won't succeed, or you will only succeed for a while, but if you make it a process and a full out change in your life forever, then you will be fine. Don't go on "diet's" when planning on lucid dreaming or you will just be a "diet lucid dreamer" (which doesn't taste as good as normal, admit it). You want to change something permanently. I sleep 8 hours almost every night, forever, not just for the next year or two years. I spend 10 minutes before I go to sleep saying my mantra and visualizing. Every night. Even if I am too tired. :P I am not lucid dreaming, I am a lucid dreamer.

Steps of dream recall for me:

nothing
Remember 1 dream a night (10 minutesish)
Remember a little more than one dream a night (10 minutesish each)
Remember 3 or 4 dreams a night (10 minutesish each)
Remember 5-6 Dreams a night (10 minutesish each)
Remember 7-8 dreams a night (10 minutesish each)
remember 2 dreams a night realizing that before you were thinking of a whole dream as just a snippet of a dream (20-30 minutes each)
Remember 3-4 dreams a night (20-30 minutes each)
Remember 3 dreams a night realizing again that you were only remembering snippets of a dream (30 minutes-hour each)
Remember 4-5 dreams a night (20 minutes to an hour each)
Remember 6-8 dreams a night (20 minutes to an hour each)
start remembering even NREM snippets as well.

I was at 4-5 (20 minutes to an hour each) yesterday, but I was taking care of wife (with strep) and baby (with fever) last night so i stepped back to 7-8 (10 mintrs or so). This seems like a huge step back, but I have a little to say about the GDA in this area.

When dealing with GDA (general dream awareness I believe that the angle on the line is a lot smaller an angle than the angle in state awareness. I think I said this before, but I am adding to it. The angle is smaller going down as well.

So say your GDA is getting higher and higher and you are at 4-5 long dreams and something like stress or lack of sleep hits. It will seemingly step you back a few steps when you haven't really stepped back. Stress and lack of sleep are exceptions, you need to not worry if it seems like it went down to zero, but it takes longer than that to get it down. A couple of months or so. I have had some really bad months and not gone back to zero even though it seemed like it. Always work on your recall! Keep it going up! If you need help with that or GDA, check out my dj system. I just want people to LD and I think that this can help.

^^ Interesting list of the recall stages! I'm somewhere in the high-middle of that list when I'm firing on all cylinders like I have the last week or two. Recently I've noticed more of the transition from the lots of unconnected scenes to a long single stream of multiple scenes. So I'm somewhere between the 7-8 and 2 or perhaps reaching 3-4 but rarely. Mostly between 7-8 and 2 (1-2). So 4-5 is really really impressive :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown:

But I know it's possible, because 6 months ago if anybody had told me I could write the sort of entries I'm writing now in my DJ about the dreams I have every night, I would have laughed saying "I hardly ever dream, what are you talking about."

What I *do* get the sense of though now is I *know* and *feel* that there's so much I'm forgetting, that just comes in as fragments.

Oh and on the subject of off-times, yes, I experienced two interruptions (going on a three week trip that causes a 2-week jet lag adjustment on both directions really sucks for dreaming) of almost a month recently, yet I pretty much got right back in the saddle once I recovered from that bad time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BrandonBoss

Stabilization
I have a few ways to stabilize, so I will note the ideas down here.

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Hey BB, did I miss your ways to stabilise? I read your tutorial about extending the dream time.

My problem, I think, is that I seem to get lucid just as I wake, so virtually all of my lucids are only a few seconds long.
I have tried to just lay dead and re-enter the dream, but never managed to succeed at that.

It's possible that I'm just not calm enough when I do LD, and that I wake because I am excited. I guess I just have to keep plugging away at that and hope to calm down a bit!

Hmmm... did I not put ways to stabilize? Interesting. I shall put some stuff up about it soon.

Main thing for me is to not worry or think about stabilizing much. Just play! I shall put up the techs that I do when losing a dream soon.

Perhaps interesting data point on BB water wake-up technique. I drank a lot of water yesterday, to-bed at 23:xx (23:20?) and at 04:00 I woke directly from the end of a series of dream scenes with excellent immediate recall of all of them (and an urgent need to pee but I was able to hold it off while I lay still and did recall). A dozen or more scenes, with lots of detail in some cases, I got a fair bit of it recorded. 20-30 minutes of dreaming probably remembered, at least piecemeal, a long one for me.

I was able to get back to sleep and had 2 more wakings each with recall, and at the first waking I did not record, but remembered it on the 2nd waking at 07:15 or so.

It may be that water wakings are more "gentle" than setting direct "wake up" intentions which Sageous suggests may run the risk of fully waking you up, making it much harder to get back to sleep.

I'm not sure where I read this, perhaps from BB, but I had my first "sight correction" in a LD last night. After getting lucid I felt like my vision was clouded, I remembered the metaphor of veils, and I then saw veils in front of my face, which I lifted away and resulted in super clear vision!