NEW and EFFECTIVE method to Lucid Dream! (CILD)

**jblb2424** · 08-03-2014 03:40 AM

Hello!

Over the past few months I have developed a new method to lucid dream that I believe to be extremely effective (if done correctly!) and should dramatically increase the amount of lucid dreams you have per night...and over time you may find yourself lucid dreaming every night. This technique is essentially a variant of the MILD method, but differs in the fact that it avoids most of the setbacks that the MILD method has in being the "perfect" lucid dreaming method. If you have any constructive criticism/suggestions pertaining to the method please leave a comment below, as I'm always open to improving it! However, PLEASE DO NOT SKIP TO THE METHOD INSTRUCTIONS IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE PRIOR INFORMATION BELOW! I feel that knowing WHY this method works will be essential in how well you actually perform the technique.

The Setbacks of The Mild Method

1. The MILD method, and many of lucid dreaming methods, relies heavily on prospective memory. Prospective memory is defined as a form of memory that involves remembering to perform a certain action at a certain time. For example, remembering to put the cap back on your toothpaste after brushing your teeth every night is a form of prospective memory. In the case of the MILD method, prospective memory plays a major role, but in what way? Well, all those mnemonics
you are chanting to yourself(Tonight when I'm dreaming I will remember when I'm dreaming, ect.) are used to get yourself to remember to perform a certain action(remember you are dreaming) at a certain time(When you are dreaming). I hope that makes sense so far! Time for some neurology...

Prospective memory is mainly regulated by the Prefrontal Cortex which is the part of the brain responsible for holding that intention to remember something until a later time. Because of this relationship, it is easy to see that any inhibition to the Prefrontal Cortex would therefore inhibit prospective memory. Well that is exactly what happens during a dream: During a typical dream, one major area of the brain that is suppressed is the Prefrontal Cortex...which as a result should suppress prospective memory. If prospective memory is suppressed, than the overall effectiveness of the MILD method decreases.

Note: Prospective memory can still be effectively used to stimulate a lucid dream as it reinforces your intention to have a lucid dream which can actually increase the amount of lucid dreams you will have.

2. When you are in a dream, do you know you are dreaming? Of course not; if that were the case you would be lucid every night. You think you are still in real life, so it should seem fairly obvious that a mnemonic reminding yourself to become lucid when you are dreaming should intrinsically not be as effective as it should be. The mnemonic reinforcing the idea to become lucid when dreaming will become much less effective because we almost always simply assume we are awake, regardless of whether we are actually awake or not.

3. Another big part of the MILD method is reality checks. Let me ask you a question...when do you perform your reality checks? For most of you, the answer will be when you are sitting at home watching TV, switching between classes at school, taking your daily walk, ect. What all of these situations have in common is that they all are times with low stress or at times when you are not performing other activities. In a dream, however, you are busy slaying dragons and running from ghosts....you are nearly always doing another activity that takes away your focus from reality checks and therefore makes them less effective.

-Regardless of these setbacks, the MILD method is still a very versatile and effective technique for various other reasons and is in my opinion one of the best lucid dreaming techniques out there!

The Technique

As a reward for getting through that wall of probably dull and boring information, I will tell you my technique first then go into the details. I think I will call this technique the CILD(Cue Induced Lucid Dream) method. You will find out why I call it that shortly!

1.Pick an event/activity that occurs ALL THE TIME in both your dreams and in reality. For example, do you talk/interact with other people daily in both your dreams and in reality? Do you run consistently in both your dreams and reality? The idea is to pick a very broad event, and the more constantly they happen in your dreams and reality, the more lucid dreams you are likely to have.

2. Every time you perform that event, become more aware of your environment and internally question if you are awake or not (Similar to the All day Awareness (ADA) technique. Read about it here: http://www.dreamviews.com/induction-...kingyoshi.html). For example, when the event I chose occurs in reality, I become more aware of what is going on around me and think to my self "Am I really awake?..." The article on ADA really puts this concept of being "aware" into great terms. I highly suggest you read it. For most people, a reality check shouldn't even be needed to confirm whether you are awake or dreaming. Most of the time, if you are dreaming you will know once you truly question your surroundings, but if you want to perform a reality check at this point go for it.

3. That's it.

Why Does This Technique Work?(And further details on the CILD method)

1. You are reinforcing an association between performing the action picked and an awareness increased awareness(which leads to lucidity). This is why choosing an action you perform consistently in both waking life and dreams is crucial: You must be able to reinforce this association by practicing the technique in reality and, when the association becomes strong enough, will trickle into your dreams when you perform the same action and cause lucidity.

2. When practiced long enough, this association between the action performed and internal/external awareness will become more and more automatic and unconscious. And what state are you in when you are dreaming? Unconscious. The same parts of the brain responsible for creating this sort of unconscious memory are still activated in the dream. Therefore, this unconscious association is easily implemented into the dreamworld, causing lucidity every time you perform the picked action in the dream. Once you get to this point, the event/action you chose will be accompanied by an automatic heightened awareness every time.

3. You may be thinking "Hey, this technique uses prospective memory(Remembering to become more aware when performing the intended action). How is this an improvement to other Lucid Dreaming methods?" True, prospective memory IS used....at first. However, as the process of becoming more aware as you complete your picked action becomes more unconscious and automatic, prospective memory is no longer used as you are no longer consciously trying to remember anything. Becoming aware every time you run or interact with others(for example) just becomes automatic. This is why, and I stress, to be persistent with this technique because YOU WILL NOT BECOME LUCID DUE TO THIS TECHNIQUE UNTIL AN UNCONSCIOUS ASSOCIATION IS MADE between the event and increased awareness. And to make this unconscious association, you need to keep up and stay persistent.

4. As a continuation to the previous paragraph, through this method you are developing something called an implicit(unconscious) cue. A cue is defined as "a thing said or done that serves as a signal to an actor or other performer to begin their performance." In the case of this technique the "cue" is the activity performed(running, interacting with others, ect.) which serves as a signal for you to become more aware. Once an implicit cue is established through repetition and practice, this cue is all you need to become lucid. No prospective memory. No reality checks. Just the cue. Hence, I call this technique the Cue Induced Lucid Dream method.

-NOTE: This method is pretty difficult to perform at first. You may find yourself having trouble forming that association between your activity and your awareness, but as I said before stay persistent! It gets easier over time, and before you know it you will become aware every single time you perform your activity without even thinking about it...and the same thing will happen in your dreams.

Well, that's it! As I said before please leave as many suggestions as possible to help further improve this method and try it out yourself! Ever since I started using this method, my lucidity count skyrocketed and I would love to hear how it works for others. Thanks for reading!

**Sensei** · 08-03-2014 04:26 AM

How is this different from dream signs?
How effective is this method? How often were you LDing before and after you started it?
Thank you for writing all this up, if you supply me with these answers it will help with my research. :3

**jblb2424** · 08-03-2014 04:56 AM

1. In a way, this is like dream signs. Essentially, you are creating your own dream sign that can be exploited in pretty much every dream of yours. Simply stated, this technique involves creating a "dream sign" and reinforcing an unconscious association between the "dream sign" and awareness. However, I think that these events you use to stimulate lucidity are different than dream signs for a few reasons:

-Dream signs often occur spontaneously. You never know what dream will have them, and what dream wont. When you chose the event/action you use for this method, it should be one that occurs consistently throughout nearly all of your dreams, making your lucid dreaming rate higher and more consistent in general.
-Dream signs often come in all different forms, making it difficult to use them as a basis for a reliable method. The event/action you use as a cue for lucidity will be the same(generally) every time. You will always know when you are running in the dream. You will always know when you are interacting with others in the dream. But sometimes you may not know when a dream sign is staring at you right in the face!
-Dream signs may not necessarily be apart of waking life, so it would be more difficult to make that association between the event and lucidity in the real world. What if your dream sign is a large green dragon? There is no such thing in the real world, and you cannot rely on pure logic to realize you are in a dream because logical thinking is suppressed in a typical dream. However, The event/action you chose for this method should always be apart of both reality and the dream world.

2. I can't say for certain how effective this method is. I never shared this method with anyone besides on Dreamviews so I can only talk from personal experience. So personally, this method was extremely effective for me. Prior to making this method I had about 4 lucid dreams a month. I lucid dream almost every night now. I hope this helps!

**Avalokiteshvara** · 08-06-2014 03:03 AM

I will give it a whirl. It'll definitely make RC's more interesting. The problem is, I'm doing many odd things during dreams. I'm not exactly cooking or brushing my teeth in dreams. What kinds of things have you found that you do in both?

**jblb2424** · 08-06-2014 06:23 AM

The way I see it, the fact that you are doing many odd things during dreams means that you have to find something you do in both in more general terms. A great one I mentioned in my guide was running, for example. I'm sure your dreams don't consist of standing in one place all the time, and my guess is that in many of your dreams you may be running to/from something. But if you do not run in real life and/or in dreams, walking works just as well. Walking is action that I think everyone can use for this technique, but personally I use talking with others. My "cue" to become more aware is whenever someone talks to me or I talk to them, and this cue has served me well. Here are a few other general things you may use for this technique, but it really differs from person to person.

-Eating
-Going outdoors
-Driving your car
-sitting down

Those are just off the top of my head but you can see how general they can be and still work just as well. In fact, the more general the better as they can be applied to more and more dreams which can then be used to create more and more lucids!Hope I helped and let me know how this method works out for you!

**Ethral** · 08-06-2014 10:51 AM

Nice tutorial! I'll try it out, my cue is probably gonna be talking. I think after a month or so the cues will be much easier since it gets more natural over a certain amount of time.

**Box77** · 08-06-2014 11:49 AM

It sounds like something I tried a while ago because of I noticed they were common activities between both worlds. The problem for me was to start focusing on the events during my waking life, because of I tend to be absorbed by those and stop being aware most of the times. What I'm still looking for is a way to trigger my awareness during those activities. I mean, it was something like the closest I was paying attention to my surroundings was just before turning the corner and get immerse into the activity or, when I have already ended them. Sometimes I got to think about it during the activity and yes, most of them it was in a dream and I became lucid then although a bit confused because of my first assumption of reality, but that's another story.

**Avalokiteshvara** · 08-06-2014 01:00 PM

Thanks, that'll help. I notice in dreams that I rarely stand in one place. I'm always on the move. And I do interact with dream figures often.

If you want to learn how to be more aware during life, there's a spiritual approach I used to be involved in called The Gurdjieff Work, which, instead of sitting meditation practices, their main practice is to observe oneself during life. They call it Self-Observation. There's a book by that title on amazon that's a great introduction to the practice.

**Bobblehat** · 08-06-2014 01:28 PM

There have a been a few threads in the past where people have treated emotions like dreamsigns and have RCed whenever they feel emotion (or maybe strong) emotion in waking life. I've not seen them report back with success, though. That's really frustrating because it seems like it really should work.

**jblb2424** · 08-06-2014 05:36 PM

I remember reading about that, Bobblehat. It really does seem like it should work but there are a few reasons why I don't like using emotions for this technique. The big one I see is that for most people, we go about the day generally on neutral. Those more "extreme" emotions(excitement, sadness, ect.) in which you would use a RC are much more rare to come by in a typical day, although they are abundant in the dream world. This makes using emotions to trigger lucid dreams more difficult to practice in reality. Also, when you do feel that intense emotion, the emotion itself interferes with your ability to logically say "Ok, I am feeling excited, time to do a RC". Those emotions are hard to come by, so your mind is more preoccupied with the experience of that emotion. However, the activities used in CILD are ones that occur so often it's routine, freeing your mind up to think "Ok, I'm talking with Joe, become more aware"

**VagalTone** · 08-06-2014 06:55 PM

Good job! A nice RC as you suggest is to take opportunity of interactions, for instance after every conversation you RC. And yes, emotions are good too, it works well with Oreo(who i have chatted just recently). I will soon put our conversation on this thread http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...ity-check.html

**Avalokiteshvara** · 08-07-2014 02:15 PM

I tend to either wander around aimlessly in both dreams and waking life, as well as go to constantly being on the go towards destinations in dreams or long journeys.

**Ethral** · 08-08-2014 08:53 AM

I started "practicing" this tech yesterday, it was very hard since my que is talking, and i talk alot, so i wasnt able to pratice it consistently. However i got 2 lucid dreams under the night! In one of them i flew and got that butterfly feeling in my stommach. Awesome!

**jblb2424** · 08-08-2014 05:30 PM

I'm glad to hear it! And yes, practicing this technique at first is pretty difficult since your mind is not used to the association you're making between talking and awareness. However, as you practice this technique you will notice that reacting to your cue will become MUCH easier and you will be able to practice it much more consistently. Good luck and congrats on the lucids!

**Zoth** · 08-08-2014 07:19 PM

I've already explored this method (it originated on the DIPE system I still use when hunting for lds), so there are imo a few things to consider:

Prospective memory is mainly regulated by the Prefrontal Cortex which is the part of the brain responsible for holding that intention to remember something until a later time. Because of this relationship, it is easy to see that any inhibition to the Prefrontal Cortex would therefore inhibit prospective memory. Well that is exactly what happens during a dream: During a typical dream, one major area of the brain that is suppressed is the Prefrontal Cortex...which as a result should suppress prospective memory. If prospective memory is suppressed, than the overall effectiveness of the MILD method decreases.

This sounds like it makes perfect sense, except it's an argument that bears no significance in lucid dreaming induction: several regions of logical thinking and decision-making planning exhibit lower degrees of activity during REM sleep. At the same time, memory is impaired, not JUST prospective memory. What you're essentially saying is that MILD is weaker as a technique because Prefrontal cortex activity is lower in a dream...but since PM is minimally present in all techniques, every technique suffers from this issue, effectively dismissing the usefulness of evoking it.

Another big part of the MILD method is reality checks.

They aren't. Reality checks are indeed mentioned by LaBerge, but in the sense that you need a reliable tool to determine whether you're dreaming. People use reality checks for all purposes, so it's not very accurate to say they are a big part of a technique (maybe if you said they are a big part of DILD).

The Technique

This is MILD: you're using a reminder to help you associate an element to a behavioral response, which in this case it happens to be a dream sign.

1. You are reinforcing an association between performing the action picked and an awareness increased awareness(which leads to lucidity). This is why choosing an action you perform consistently in both waking life and dreams is crucial: You must be able to reinforce this association by practicing the technique in reality and, when the association becomes strong enough, will trickle into your dreams when you perform the same action and cause lucidity.

As someone who used this extensively (my dream element were my cats), I can tell you this is a natural result of MILD practice. By your own words, there isn't any information that contradicts anything that is processed during MILD execution. These kind of "automatic associations" are simply examples of conditioning. All the other points confirm that.

-Dream signs often occur spontaneously. You never know what dream will have them, and what dream wont. When you chose the event/action you use for this method, it should be one that occurs consistently throughout nearly all of your dreams, making your lucid dreaming rate higher and more consistent in general.

I tested this, and it's actually the other way around: universal dream signs are MORE powerful than personal one (assuming like you said dream signs don't always show up): this is because we have statistics that indicate that there are extremely high odds that one of these fews universal dream signs show up. Not trying to steal the spotlight here (just show the theory I formulated that is based on Dream Signs), but DIPE encompasses all of them, while adhering to several principles established by the several dream theories.

So in the end, this is essentially MILD, but you do indeed make a great job at explaining it at "later stages", or in precise terms, what happens (in a conditioning scenario) if you stick to the technique long enough.

**Avalokiteshvara** · 08-08-2014 08:48 PM

It seems to be at least a good discussion. Should MILD revolve around doing reality checks when there are specific dream cues, or when there is some activity that occur in both dreams and waking life. Probably both right?

**Zoth** · 08-08-2014 09:00 PM

Originally Posted by Avalokiteshvara

It seems to be at least a good discussion. Should MILD revolve around doing reality checks when there are specific dream cues, or when there is some activity that occur in both dreams and waking life. Probably both right?

As a Prospective Memory promoter, MILD can influence your performance on the use of any kind of elements: if you become great at doing lists so you don't forget stuff, it doesn't matter what's in the list, anything works!

Regarding specific dream cues, dream signs offer the same problem as they always did: regardless of your ability to spot them and associate them with reality checks, you're essentially relying on specific cues that might not always show up.
As opposed to that, using universal dream signs (like in the DIPE system) guarantees that there's always a scenario where the cue is there: 70% of dreams showing negative emotions like stress or anxiety is a pretty huge number, irregularities must always be present at some level, people are a natural product of us being social animals, and displacement is also another classic dream characteristic.)

I'd say you should also integrate specific cues but based on some factors that are usually disregarded: Steph L and some of us were arguing about how dream content is represented actually a few days after the event with impact occurred (as opposed to in the next night): it was an interesting discussion, but I can't find the thread :x

**Avalokiteshvara** · 08-08-2014 10:11 PM

I couldn't find the DIPE method on google. Do you have a link to it?

**Bobblehat** · 08-09-2014 08:05 AM

Avalokiteshvara: the Zoth post - the "DIPE systems" part in the first line is a link.

**Ethral** · 08-09-2014 09:41 AM

Just an update, woke up and remembered a couple of dreams. In almost all of them i thought i was dreaming, it was so weird, i did the nose pinch rc maybe 8 times in all of my dreams but most of the time i couldnt breath through, i wish i did another rc too. I was questioning if im dreaming or not alot basically, however i dont think i reached lucidity.

**yaya** · 08-09-2014 12:58 PM

Wow!!!!thank you gblb2424! Although I practice WILD, but your method convinced me to try DILD another time!
I almost tried every method in these month and your method, after 3 days of practice, gave me an LD after a long dry spell!
My cue was communicating with others. In my dream, I was talking to a group of people,Suddenly I realized that one of member of the group should be in other country not in front of me! So I reality checked and sure it showed I am dreaming.
In waking life, I don't do ADA during my cue but I just reality check.

CILD is one of the most genius LD technique I ever seen!

**Sensei** · 08-09-2014 03:39 PM

Originally Posted by Zoth

As a Prospective Memory promoter, MILD can influence your performance on the use of any kind of elements: if you become great at doing lists so you don't forget stuff, it doesn't matter what's in the list, anything works!

Regarding specific dream cues, dream signs offer the same problem as they always did: regardless of your ability to spot them and associate them with reality checks, you're essentially relying on specific cues that might not always show up.http://www.dreamviews.com/newreply.p...eply&p=2117326
As opposed to that, using universal dream signs (like in the DIPE system) guarantees that there's always a scenario where the cue is there: 70% of dreams showing negative emotions like stress or anxiety is a pretty huge number, irregularities must always be present at some level, people are a natural product of us being social animals, and displacement is also another classic dream characteristic.)

I'd say you should also integrate specific cues but based on some factors that are usually disregarded: Steph L and some of us were arguing about how dream content is represented actually a few days after the event with impact occurred (as opposed to in the next night): it was an interesting discussion, but I can't find the thread :x

When using things like this, why do people lean towards things like anxiety or things like this? There are plenty of things that show up in every LD and in waking at all times. look at hukif gravity or mylynes "breathing and blinking" as something that they connect from dreams to waking 100% of the time. Most naturals have something similar as well. A RC that is always present.

**LouaiB** · 08-09-2014 07:21 PM

As Zoth explained, this automatic remembering to become aware after said DS is still prospective memory. You say we become accustomed to this DS that it becomes automatic in our subconscious, thus not relying on PM anymore, but the truth is that it becomes automatic DUE TO PM NATURE, because PM does get used to a certain cue used a lot, and it becomes automatic. So, this is still PM, which actually gives an edge to MILD.

Also your method still relies on PM(using a DS), and you say it works, which indicates that the PM isn't fully impaired during REM.
Still, partially impaired kinda sucks, and this is why the PM's ability to get used to a certain often used cue, and thus increasingly detects this cue more and more even though the PM is impaired, comes in handy. Also the fact that we can train our PM is very important, because this little power left after the PM's impairment increases, and increases, making this little percentage much more powerful and effective. So these 2 perks are what makes the PM the cause of professionality in LDing.

Also RCs aren't a part of MILD.

About the "we never know that we are dreaming while we are in a dream, so saying I want to know I'm dreaming next time I'm dreaming doesn't make sense" is something I think about too.
But obviously there are much more elements we experience in dreams that become this cue, because in dreams we don't know we are dreaming, but we feel these variables, these become the "when I'm dreaming" cue. You don't need to find DSs that always occur in dreams, because we already feel a lot of these during the dream, and we are integrating them as "when I'm dreaming" cue. In other words, the dreaming feeling. Still I'm not sure this explanation I just explained is true. Maybe another explanation is that our prospective memory tracking system DOES know when we are dreaming, because it is a subconscious tool, and probably doesn't fully need our conscious information to find cues. Again, I'm speculating, because this is something that worries me a lot. That's why DSs seem more effective, they are cues that we can consciously detect.

**Zoth** · 08-09-2014 07:26 PM

Originally Posted by Sensei

When using things like this, why do people lean towards things like anxiety or things like this? There are plenty of things that show up in every LD and in waking at all times. look at hukif gravity or mylynes "breathing and blinking" as something that they connect from dreams to waking 100% of the time. Most naturals have something similar as well. A RC that is always present.

Because they both are acquired habits. Regardless of what dream theory you follow, it's not imperative that the scenario shows specific details like full range of bodily functions: the dream's purpose is so much about events than the state of the individual, and since memory is a simulation process, then it's only natural for those minor details to be disregarded most of the times. Just to give you an example, I'm a chronic asthmatic sufferer, and it's not uncommon for me to seriously draw out of breath at least once a day. Even still, suffocating or troubles breathing is rarely an occurrence in my dreams.

When we talk about things like anxiety, we are basing ourselves in psychological dream theories: like memory formation or emotional regulation. Besides, we draw elements that are shown (by statistics) that have a high prevalence in dreams of everyone. The other good thing about emotions it's because they are extremely general: thousands of events can trigger a stress response, and that is illustrated by dreaming of fighting, avoiding, hiding, running away, confronting, etc.
Breathing deserves a special mention here: when I said it's an acquired habit, I meant "being aware of your breathing/blinking", but since our problem in dream recall is recalling whether we were breathing the whole time or not, we can't say for sure that it's prevalence isn't indeed as high (or even higher) than things like experiencing negative emotions. But when we include the function of breathing, we see why it can't be categorized as a universal dream sign: it's non-communicative. By this I mean that breathing is an automatic process that doesn't carry any information to other parts of the brain: it's just like heart beat (ofc, assuming natural levels). On the other hand, signs of anxiety ARE an attempt of communication: they are a response function (you don't feel happy out of nowhere).

This leads us to other vital strength of emotions: since they aren't persistent (like feelings), they can be more easily traced to specific agents. Last night I became lucid because of awareness to my happiness derived from a gift. Breathing/blinking is something my body does every time, making it much harder to notice....but joy, it must always have a root: it was the fact that I rationalized over that specific joy that made me lucid. Unlike breathing/blinking, we are not evolutionary designed to ignore emotions: on the contrary, you can quickly detect a high range of symptoms that can tell you that you're afraid.

PS: The question to me is never "should you use universal dream signs or specific ones?", because acquired habits will eventually sink in (this explains Hukif's gravity RC), but "what are the most reliable dream signs to use as cues?". That said, it's obvious that the best ones are the ones with the highest frequency and the least reliable on external factors (aka, the most independent ones regardless of the variables of dream content).

**LouaiB** · 08-09-2014 07:36 PM

Originally Posted by Zoth

Because they both are acquired habits. Regardless of what dream theory you follow, it's not imperative that the scenario shows specific details like full range of bodily functions: the dream's purpose is so much about events than the state of the individual, and since memory is a simulation process, then it's only natural for those minor details to be disregarded most of the times. Just to give you an example, I'm a chronic asthmatic sufferer, and it's not uncommon for me to seriously draw out of breath at least once a day. Even still, suffocating or troubles breathing is rarely an occurrence in my dreams.

When we talk about things like anxiety, we are basing ourselves in psychological dream theories: like memory formation or emotional regulation. Besides, we draw elements that are shown (by statistics) that have a high prevalence in dreams of everyone. The other good thing about emotions it's because they are extremely general: thousands of events can trigger a stress response, and that is illustrated by dreaming of fighting, avoiding, hiding, running away, confronting, etc.
Breathing deserves a special mention here: when I said it's an acquired habit, I meant "being aware of your breathing/blinking", but since our problem in dream recall is recalling whether we were breathing the whole time or not, we can't say for sure that it's prevalence isn't indeed as high (or even higher) than things like experiencing negative emotions. But when we include the function of breathing, we see why it can't be categorized as a universal dream sign: it's non-communicative. By this I mean that breathing is an automatic process that doesn't carry any information to other parts of the brain: it's just like heart beat (ofc, assuming natural levels). On the other hand, signs of anxiety ARE an attempt of communication: they are a response function (you don't feel happy out of nowhere).

This leads us to other vital strength of emotions: since they aren't persistent (like feelings), they can be more easily traced to specific agents. Last night I became lucid because of awareness to my happiness derived from a gift. Breathing/blinking is something my body does every time, making it much harder to notice....but joy, it must always have a root: it was the fact that I rationalized over that specific joy that made me lucid. Unlike breathing/blinking, we are not evolutionary designed to ignore emotions: on the contrary, you can quickly detect a high range of symptoms that can tell you that you're afraid.

PS: The question to me is never "should you use universal dream signs or specific ones?", because acquired habits will eventually sink in (this explains Hukif's gravity RC), but "what are the most reliable dream signs to use as cues?". That said, it's obvious that the best ones are the ones with the highest frequency and the least reliable on external factors (aka, the most independent ones regardless of the variables of dream content).

Beautifully explained!
Might these be the cues that cause the "next time I'm dreaming" cue? As explained in the OP, when I'm dreaming isn't a cue, but add to it these elements of powerful emotions (70% of dreams), and next time I'm dreaming actually has a uniqueness, or is it because our PM indeed does know when we are dreaming?