Help developing a solid daily routine for DILDs

Hey guys,

It's been a while since I've been active on this forum, but I wanted to give Lucid Dreaming another shot (got overwhelmed last time, decided to take a break). I want to stick with it and put in the hard work, because I know that's the only way I will reach my goal. There really is no "shortcut," sadly.

But I need your help. I'm specifically going for DILDs; however, I am completely lost as to what I should be doing in my daily routine. I'm split between self-awareness (mainly Sageous) and ADA (KingYoshi). I read this thread to get an idea of where I should be focusing my energy or what I should practice for awareness, but it seems to have confused me more. Yoshi made great points, so did Sageous and others. But I'm just a noob, so I can't relate to what they were saying too well.

My current daily routine involves me practicing Yoshi's ADA. I simply take in everything, not really question it. I just take everything in. After doing this (I sort of throw these questions at the end of the ADA practice), I'll ask questions along the lines of:

• How did I get here?
• What was I doing ten minutes ago?
• Why am I here?
• Where will I be in fifteen minutes?

Am I practicing awareness correctly? I want to get a solid daily routine to get to my DILD goal. The hard part is figuring out what my daily routine needs to consist of.

And for anyone who does practice KingYoshi's ADA, have you developed the ability to become Lucid by simply knowing it is a dream state? KingYoshi says that is the purpose behind his ADA, to simply "know" your dreaming and to be Lucid all the time. This sounds wonderful, but again there's people who claim this to not work.

Thanks, hope the post made sense (pretty tired)!

I can't say what works or what doesn't, but in my opinion it depends on how much energy you have to spend.

Simply put if we could all go meditate in a cave somewhere for a week straight I think we might all reach lucidity extremely quickly, unfortunately life just doesn't allow for that, there's always something that diverts attention from the task.

My only suggestion would be to not worry about it. Meditate in the morning / before bed time, I recommend reading Mindfulness of Breathing | Wildmind Buddhist Meditation to learn how to do this.

Once you start doing this, even if it's just 10 minutes a day, awareness / calmness will build up very easily and naturally, there's no force involved and you actually conserve energy. So in a sense it's actually not hard work, but quite the opposite, you're calming down and when the mind isn't overflowing with thoughts, worries and problems you have a lot more mental space to take everything in and just be aware of whatever is going on, in life or in a dream.

While you're doing this, for semi-regular lucidity I would recommend WILD, WILD will get you a lucid dream at least once a week when you get used to it no matter where you are with your DILD practice, it's the perfect technique to do so that you don't get frustrated with thoughts like "I've been trying to DILD for so long and nothing!", because WILD can actually be done with just pure brute force (well, you have to be relaxed while doing a WILD, but you are a lot more in control or at least can see results a lot faster than DILD).

Enjoy the ride! At the very least just start paying attention to your normal dreams, they can already be very interesting even if you're not lucid.

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Originally Posted by Memm

I can't say what works or what doesn't, but in my opinion it depends on how much energy you have to spend.

Simply put if we could all go meditate in a cave somewhere for a week straight I think we might all reach lucidity extremely quickly, unfortunately life just doesn't allow for that, there's always something that diverts attention from the task.

My only suggestion would be to not worry about it. Meditate in the morning / before bed time, I recommend reading Mindfulness of Breathing | Wildmind Buddhist Meditation to learn how to do this.

Once you start doing this, even if it's just 10 minutes a day, awareness / calmness will build up very easily and naturally, there's no force involved and you actually conserve energy. So in a sense it's actually not hard work, but quite the opposite, you're calming down and when the mind isn't overflowing with thoughts, worries and problems you have a lot more mental space to take everything in and just be aware of whatever is going on, in life or in a dream.

While you're doing this, for semi-regular lucidity I would recommend WILD, WILD will get you a lucid dream at least once a week when you get used to it no matter where you are with your DILD practice, it's the perfect technique to do so that you don't get frustrated with thoughts like "I've been trying to DILD for so long and nothing!", because WILD can actually be done with just pure brute force (well, you have to be relaxed while doing a WILD, but you are a lot more in control or at least can see results a lot faster than DILD).

Enjoy the ride! At the very least just start paying attention to your normal dreams, they can already be very interesting even if you're not lucid.

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Thanks for the reply! It's greatly appreciated.

So your recommendation is to replace my current awareness training (ADA) with the meditation? I don't know why, but I always wanted to avoid meditation. It has always seemed complicated, yet I have never actually looked into it or tried it. Nonetheless, if your recommendation is to drop ADA and start with meditation, I might just do that. I will have to look into it more. :)

I have always loved the idea of WILD. I was never sure if doing two induction techniques at the same time was healthy for my progress (WILD & DILD), but I guess I'll give it a shot! But It definitely seams to reap the most reward compared to most other techniques. I'll have to start taking a few cracks at it.

Again, thank you for the information!

EDIT: Would the meditation be helpful for both WILD and DILD, or will I need another tool to help advance my WILD progress?

- I wouldn't say replace it, it's just in my opinion KingYoshi's ADA sounds very intense, a couple of things 1) as far as I know from experience and out of all the things I have read, it is said very often that you cannot achieve mindfulness through force. It's a very gentle part of the mind, concentration you can improve through force, mindfulness you only improve through being mindful. 2) I could be wrong but the way KingYoshi talks about ADA it really sounds very draining, even he suggests that you start with just 5-10 minutes a day, I think it's easier to meditate twice a day for 10 minutes instead and achieve the same thing through gentle effort rather than overloading your senses and possibly giving up.

- There's nothing wrong with doing WILD and DILD at the same time, lots of failed WILD attempts turn into DILDs

- Meditation helps with everything and it's not complicated; an extremely simplified version is you're just sitting there following your breath, when your mind wanders you notice this and you return to the breath. Noticing that your mind has wandered is mindfulness at work, every time you notice you have wandered you are in fact improving mindfulness and at the same time concentration. When you get up from meditation you do your best to not forget that calm, mindful state as you go about your day. Then there is just a list of problems you want to avoid while doing this, it's not difficult to learn, the rest you pick up during practice.

There are a lot of other meditations but we're trying to lucid dream not become the next Buddha, if you happen to reach enlightenment during your meditation practice think of it as a bonus. ;]

Hopefully serious meditation practitioners don't get too mad at me for saying that.


PS: I do recommend reading about breathing meditation thoroughly to understand it fully, but you can start off with one of the first three http://marc.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=22 files here if you want to get straight into it.

Thanks for clearing all of that up! :)

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Originally Posted by Memm

PS: I do recommend reading about breathing meditation thoroughly to understand it fully, but you can start off with one of the first three Free Guided Meditations | UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center files here if you want to get straight into it.

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I plan on reading the entire guide you sent me in your earlier post, if that's what you mean.

And if you don't mind me asking, what does this concentration have to do with Lucidity (I'm not "questioning" it, just curious what it's relation is and how it helps :) )?

Well concentration is just being able to focus on something, in this case the breath. If you can't focus then your mind wanders for a long time, meaning mindfulness doesn't get used very often. As far as lucidity goes, I suppose being able to concentrate would help to stabilise a dream and maintain lucidity (I have read people reporting that they lose lucidity part way through a dream sometimes, I have never had this problem so I don't know) but I imagine concentration would help with that. Also being able to focus would mean not falling asleep during WILD for example. Lots of things!

I think it might take forever to list all the things a powerful mind could be useful for. ;]

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Memm

Well concentration is just being able to focus on something, in this case the breath. If you can't focus then your mind wanders for a long time, meaning mindfulness doesn't get used very often. As far as lucidity goes, I suppose being able to concentrate would help to stabilise a dream and maintain lucidity (I have read people reporting that they lose lucidity part way through a dream sometimes, I have never had this problem so I don't know) but I imagine concentration would help with that. Also being able to focus would mean not falling asleep during WILD for example. Lots of things!

I think it might take forever to list all the things a powerful mind could be useful for. ;]

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I can see how the meditation would be very useful for WILD; however, it seems like it has no benefit for DILD.

I can do the meditation for improving my WILD, so I can maintain focus/concentration. But don't I need to work on some form of self-awareness for DILDs?

No you improve both mindfulness and concentration through meditation.

http://www.wildmind.org/applied/dail...is-mindfulness


Your goal in a DILD is to realise you're dreaming, if you are just aware then you can be aware of anything, just being aware will help you remember dreams, since you're aware of the things that are happening, but without a critical / purposeful awareness you're not going to realise you're dreaming.

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Originally Posted by Buckey

I can see how the meditation would be very useful for WILD; however, it seems like it has no benefit for DILD.

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Not so. Meditation is probably the most direct way to increase self-awareness.