Trying to become lucid every night by 2015

I have a big goal that I want to accomplish - gain the ability to become lucid every night. I've set a cutoff date for myself: January 1st 2015. Basically I want to prove to myself that I can accomplish anything if I put my mind to it.

A little back story - I picked up lucid dream about a year and a half ago. Since then I've spent many hours reading about lucid dreaming and am familiar with almost every technique in the alphabet. Lately though I've fallen behind. I don't use reality checks as much and I stopped writing in my dream journal. At the current rate, I get about 4 lucid dreams per month, all DILDs.

But I'm not really happy with this. I don't want to slack on by anymore, I want to master it. If this means spending all my free time focusing on lucid dreaming, then so be it.

What techniques have you employed to help you master lucid dreaming? What should I seriously look into? Any general lifestyle advice that may help? I'm open to anything. I only have 3 months left after all.

That's a high bar you are setting for yourself. I like the enthusiasm though, you can do it if you want it bad enough.

All I'm going to say is- It's definitely possible. My advice to you so you can achieve this goal is to practice a Lucid Mindset. Whether it be Self Awareness(What I do) or All Day Awareness, choose one and stick with it.
When I was on top of my Self Awareness, I would become Lucid at least once a night, and I would be semi-lucid in at least half of my REM dreams of the night. This was all after 2 months of practicing it. Mold whatever you choose to fit you, thats when it works best. Just make sure you don't mold whatever method or technique you want to the point where its not even effective any more, laziness doesn't bring success.
Like I said, once you really get a hold of Self Awareness, you can get Lucid every night easily.
Go for it man, its definitely possible no doubt.

I'm still trying to become lucid every night as well. This is my 3 step plan to achieve consistency.

1.Become lucid in a dream trying various things through trial and error.
2.Once you become lucid, write down what you did to become lucid in as much detail as possible (time you went to bed, time you wake up, length of wbtb, key thoughts while falling asleep, key thoughts during the day, level of stress, confidence, intent, ect.) That's your lucid dream induction technique.
3.Follow your lucid dream induction technique exactly to induce another lucid dream. Once your able to do this as consistently as you would like, you're all done. If your lucid dream technique doesn't work, try to analyze what went wrong and either try your technique again, make adjustments to it, or go back to step 1.

I've been trying this for 2+ years but still haven't been able to become lucid more than 8 consecutive nights because I'm not as detailed oriented as I should be. But, I'm pretty certain this is the way to master lucid dreaming. You could probably apply this to lucid dream stabilization and control too.

This inspires me to try to take my lucid dreaming to another level :D

That's quite the goal, hope you don't have any sleepless nights while trying to accomplish this.

As for techniques, you could try the DEILD (Dream Exit Induced Lucid Dream) technique where you go back to sleep while your body is coming out of sleep paralysis, takes a lot of effort to get the whole "wake up after every dream" thing. Good technique, unless of course it bothers you to not write down your dreams when you wake up, like I do.

Good luck on your night time adventures! :3

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Originally Posted by OneUp

Whether it be Self Awareness(What I do) or All Day Awareness, choose one and stick with it.

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Could you briefly describe how you practice Self Awareness? Or link me to a thread if you've already talked about it.

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Originally Posted by sebby64

Could you briefly describe how you practice Self Awareness? Or link me to a thread if you've already talked about it.

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Vipassana is one of the main methods. Focus your attention on your mind. Either broadly focus on all mental phenomena that arise or on one aspect (visual, auditory "talk", emotional sensations). You can note each arising at first (basically, using a thought to acknowledge your acknowledging, keeps you on track in the beginning).

So if a random auditory thought surfaces, you observe it, note it(I like to think of this part as a stamp, you stamp the phenomena as "observed, acknowledged"), continue to observe it, if it continues to exist you note it again after a little bit. I've found that when I'm truly self aware and not mixed up in the mental goings-on, as soon as I note something it falls away, I'm not sustaining it with identification/invested attention so it ceases to be. Songs stuck in the head are another thing though, they can go for a bit on their own.

After awhile you spend more and more time in a state of rest, where you are totally self aware and present, but there isn't any mental activity, or if there is you are aware of it and observing it in the instant it arises and it drops away almost immediately without you latching onto it or being carried away by it. This is self awareness, the more time spent in that state the better off you will be. Don't try and hold onto that state though, breaking out of habitual identification is just as important as resting in that delicious state.

Doing this for at least 40 minutes a day gets me lucids. Can take a couple weeks of daily practice before they start showing up if I've taken a lengthy break from the practice, but they are vivid and stable DILDS.

As for why this helps with lucids, my theory is that you are training yourself to be a dispassionate observe of phenomena. Usually we are the opposite, we identify with thought streams, with emotions, with bodily sensations, we get wrapped up in the events happening around us. In dreams we do the same but to a even larger degree, we aren't dispassionately observing at all, we are "in" the experience, there's no higher level awareness involved. My lucids that come from this awareness training aren't sparked by any one thing usually, I just am aware enough that I realize I'm in a dream, that observing awareness is built up enough that it becomes part of my base level of existence and instead of buying into the dream events/thoughts/emotions/etc. I am observing and have enough "space" to realize it's a dream. Even in the dreams where I don't become fully lucid that knowing is still there on some level, scary dreams cease to be actually scary because deep down you know it's not real. That's a frustrating once you wake up because you wanted the full lucidity, but in the dream you are content to just experience the dream like you would a movie. A interactive movie, that is.

Go to shinzen.org, there is a free pdf ebook there that is amazing called "the 5 ways to know yourself".

Yeah I'd be glad to. Go to my profile and click the "Latest Started Threads" under my profile picture. There you will find my thread called, "My Journey With Self Awareness and My Twist To It." It's all about Self Awareness and really does clear alot of things up about it :)

Nothing much to add after these great replies... but just to wish you best luck and to share with you that you will indeed accomplish this goal :)

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Originally Posted by dolphin

I'm still trying to become lucid every night as well. This is my 3 step plan to achieve consistency.

1.Become lucid in a dream trying various things through trial and error.
2.Once you become lucid, write down what you did to become lucid in as much detail as possible (time you went to bed, time you wake up, length of wbtb, key thoughts while falling asleep, key thoughts during the day, level of stress, confidence, intent, ect.) That's your lucid dream induction technique.
3.Follow your lucid dream induction technique exactly to induce another lucid dream. Once your able to do this as consistently as you would like, you're all done. If your lucid dream technique doesn't work, try to analyze what went wrong and either try your technique again, make adjustments to it, or go back to step 1.

I've been trying this for 2+ years but still haven't been able to become lucid more than 8 consecutive nights because I'm not as detailed oriented as I should be. But, I'm pretty certain this is the way to master lucid dreaming. You could probably apply this to lucid dream stabilization and control too.

This inspires me to try to take my lucid dreaming to another level :D

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I find that changes to day/night work take time to "seep in" -- how do you account for this? Or do you frequently find "instant" results with changes same-day?

I set a similar goal for myself, though I gave myself a year. It's nice to see that there are others who share in my idea. I thought that it would be better to determine what steps I would have to take to become a better lucid dreamer and then take those steps slowly and steadily.

For better or worse it seems as though my ability to fully lucid dream is not blocked by a poorly executed lucid dreaming technique, but rather a mental/spiritual issue...

I would say my own goal is "at will" lucid dreaming -- some nights I just want to black out in the fog of sleep. I think my biggest hurdle is night work -- day work I think I've more or less conquered: I think about dreaming all the time, focus on staying mindful, do tons of RCs, etc. But I find that when life gets busy/stressful, maintaining the strong bedtime intention to notice night-time wakings and be lucid in dreams can slip. Surprisingly, one of the most important and seemingly easiest prerequisites, a regular sleep schedule, is one of the things I can't seem to do consistently. Well, I know the problem, so I just need to *fix it*! Best of luck with your goals!

General lifestyle advice? Um, yeah, pay attention. No, that's it, just pay attention when you're awake. Don't go through life on auto-pilot. If you're aware in waking life it's likely you'll start being aware in dreams. Though it's much easier said than done, awareness 12 hours a day is not an easy task, but rewarding.

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Originally Posted by mimihigurashi

General lifestyle advice? Um, yeah, pay attention. No, that's it, just pay attention when you're awake. Don't go through life on auto-pilot. If you're aware in waking life it's likely you'll start being aware in dreams. Though it's much easier said than done, awareness 12 hours a day is not an easy task, but rewarding.

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Well said. Stay tuned in, avoid zoning out. If you do zone out, and you will, don't stress, just quietly bring back your attention to your self. The more you do this, consistently, the longer you'll stay tuned in. It's like building up a muscle. Many consider this *the* key practice that promotes lucidity. Lucid in life, lucid in dreams. Lucidity in life is its own reward, so go for it!

Yeah it makes perfect sense that changes in your awake state affect your dream state. I started practicing a lucid-mindset in my daily life based off of the advice here, and it's pretty cool to see my skill improving steadily.

The best advice that I can give you is to find people that LD every night and look at their stories. You probably are not going to find a breakthrough, but something that is similar to what all the other good LDers have done. Lucid dreamers actually do have a group of things that 99% of them do regularly.