2016: Year of Awareness, Gravity and Lucidity

Progress Report 5 Months In:
Almost half of the year is down and I'm back again with more statistics and self-admonishing, hooray :p.

-Write in my dream journal every night, no matter how much or how little I remember
Once more I have written in my DJ every day and I have also remembered at least a fragment for every day this month. While my recall has suffered due to the end of semester and stress it hasn't slipped too badly, I averaged 2.71 dreams and 0.48 fragments per night, still better than even February. Hopefully now I am spending most of June on holidays I will be able to continue my huge gains with recall, hopefully back to April levels.

-Post on Dreamviews every day
I feel like my posting rate slipped a little bit as well for similar reasons, however I think I was ok. Will definitely try to pick this up this month however!

-Meditate every day
:bang: I even signed up to a meditation website thing to try and motivate me, however I literally forgot about it the next day. I will go back on that site however and get started again, I know this is key to getting lucid.

-For Autumn (Australian) working up to optimistically at least 7 lucids a month
Ah this seems so optimistic now haha. I think I had one or two semi lucids and a couple of very near misses but still no proper lucid. It's been nearly 6 months now since my last legit lucid, getting a bit pissed tbh, but I know I haven't been putting in the required work. I wish I could go to a retreat or something for a week and just work on dreams solidly, unfortunately a little thing called responsibility exists.

So overall not a particularly great month however I expect much better results next month, and hey isn't expectation is half the battle (the other half is of course putting in the effort)? Welp, now it's :offtobed:

Hahaha, I absolutely love reading this. I could've written the same progress reports as you regarding meditation and some other motivation related stuff. But I am now starting to see that going full at it just doesn't suit me, I am currently making peace with the fact that I sometimes just forget about lucid dreaming in busy months. The most important thing I found is to not stress about it, I did stress a bit about that a while back, but my lucid dream count is slowly, but steadily, rising and I will reach 100 lucid dreams at the end of this year probably.

I never really understood what people meant with 'lucid dreaming takes time', but I'm starting to get it now. Lucid dreaming is not about mastering a certain technique, lucid dreaming is about learning about yourself, how your mind works. And that simply takes time.

So just stay at it, even if the progress doesn't seem significant, it will be in the long run. I'll keep following your progress :) .

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Forg

I never really understood what people meant with 'lucid dreaming takes time', but I'm starting to get it now. Lucid dreaming is not about mastering a certain technique, lucid dreaming is about learning about yourself, how your mind works. And that simply takes time.

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Yep, and *changing* how your mind works...also takes time!

Progress Report 6 Months In: Halfway Through!
Halfway through the year woohoo :breakitdown: This month has been a bit of a slow burner for me, while I have had most of the month of with mid year break for the first few weeks I was too enamoured with my newfound free time (whats that??) to properly focus on lucid dreaming. Therefore June hasn't been the greatest of months but right near the end I had my first lucid since January 3rd! Both a good thing and bad thing that it has been so long lol, ah well.

-Write in my dream journal every night, no matter how much or how little I remember
6 months down and I am still keeping up. This month I started only typing up my DJ every week, chain posting the weeks dreams, but I think I will go back to doing it every day or so as this habit instills a bit of laziness. I have continued to recall something every night, and I can say that my dream journaling habit is well and truly embedded such that every time I wake up I reach for my laptop to type up my dreams, as well as (somewhat panicking sometimes haha) trying to hold on to my dreams as soon as I wake up. My recall slipped a little thanks to the aforementioned laziness as well as the erratic sleep schedule holidays bring, I averaged about 2.63 full dreams and 0.37 fragments per night, not fantastic but still pretty decent. It shows how even when I am not particularly trying to recall dreams I have moved up my baseline by at least a dream or two each night. I hope this increase is permanent, or could get even higher, as I don't want to return to hardly remembering anything.

-Post on Dreamviews every day
I don't know about every day but I feel like I have been posting regularly enough. I have also started going back on chat some more which is nice.

-Meditate every day
My old foe, how I see you laughing at me... But seriously I derped on this the whole month but I have recently read some articles and rediscovered dream yoga in a way so I have started the practice up again and I am determined to make July a turning point as far as meditation goes.

-For Winter, working up to at least 7 lucids a month, optimistically at least 10 a month
Well, I did have a lucid dream for the first time in nearly 6 months so I am proud of that :D. I have regained a bit of spark and vigour about lucid dreaming and I have noticed a general trend these last few weeks of awareness within my dreams. I have also begun to dissect some of the underlying reasons I feel I haven't been performing too well, such as apathy while playing video games as well as a lack of focus before bed. As such I have set some new goals for July like repeating lucidity mantras before bed (It worked so well for recall, might do them too :)) and to be more mindful and RC while playing games. I hope to see these take effect in the coming weeks.

Well I think that's all for June. Its a little late but with half the year down I have kept more or less to my commitment (well my main commitment was about recall). I am starting to properly recognize how important consistency is and I shall start applying some of that consistency while covering some weaknesses I have and if all goes well July should be a very positive month. :) My recall may not be so ridiculously high as before but in all honesty I am satisfied with a consistent basis of around 3 dreams a night and if I can maintain that I will be fine. The first half of 2016 for me was about recall and general dream habits, now the latter half will be about lucidity. Here we go! :offtobed:

I haven't been able to get on DV recently as my internet has been down for a bit, but good news :). I had another lucid a couple of days ago, I thought I was awake however because it was so realistic haha. My body was semi paralyzed (maybe I was feeling my real body?) and I tried to breath fire however I just blew out super hot air, more like steam. I have also had a spike in recall averaging 5 to 6 dreams a night, so hopefully I continue this good form.

Progress Report 7 Months In: (Delayed Edition)
I know this is coming pretty late but university does that hehe. Other than that July was a fantastic month in regards to dreaming. My recall shot up again and I had 2 nice lucids! I felt like I was starting to get on a roll with my lucidity practice and it all clicked pretty well. Alrighty let's see how I did compared to my goals.

-Write in my dream journal every night, no matter how much or how little I remember
Once again I have kept this up, and my recall has picked back up to good levels again. I recalled ~130 dreams and ~18 fragments, which means an average of 4.19 dreams and 0.58 fragments per night, so not bad at all :). So on this front it was definitely an improvement from last month, particularly from about the 15th to the 25th where my recall exploded to about 5-6 dreams a night.

-Post on Dreamviews every day
Well I certainly tried haha, I'm not sure if I did post every day but I know I sort of changed a bit so instead of posting one thing every day I tried to post a few things every few days. But anyway I think I was still decently active here on DV.

-Meditate every day
I think I meditated a few times this month, but yeah not good enough. I did feel a bit more general awareness though after the doldrums of June.

-For Winter, working up to at least 7 lucids a month, optimistically at least 10 a month
Well I didn't have 7 but I did have 2 haha, which I am happy with considering my record this year. One of my lucids was even on the first day of Spellbee's competition. Of the two lucids in July and also the small lucid I had this morning I have noticed that getting angry has been a bit of a trigger for lucidity, which I find a bit unusual, however if it works it works! In both dreams I have felt a flash of anger and then my awareness has shot up, maybe because I get more aware of when I am angry IRL so I don't do anything stupid, I don't know? Anyway in both of my lucids I wasn't super stable and my vision went dark and I felt a bit paralyzed, so maybe I need to focus on stabilizing techniques and separating my dream body from my actual body. On a more positive note I did play a bit with elemental manipulation and gravity, so I hope I am a bit more well versed in them now.

Hopefully this month was a good sign for things to come, both in recall rates and lucidity rates. I have identified some areas I need to work on and some things I am doing well so here's to an even better August! :cheers: :offtobed:

Year in Review:
(Apologies for lateness, I have been pretty busy.) Whew, I really regret not posting these past 5 months, but I am back to give a recap of the year. It has been a pretty crazy ride and while I didn't achieve everything I hoped for, and there were ups and downs, I definitely made a lot of progress when I was applying myself, and I learned a lot about myself. Ok here we go.

August: ~76 full dreams, ~13 fragments, 1 lucid, avg. 2.45 dreams and 0.42 fragments a night
September: ~66 dreams, ~16 fragments, 0 lucids, avg. 2.2 dreams and 0.53 fragments a night
October: ~107 dreams, ~10 fragments, 0 lucids, avg. 3.45 dreams and 0.32 fragments a night
November: ~75 dreams, ~9 fragments, 0 lucids, avg. 2.5 dreams and 0.3 fragments a night
December: ~72 dreams, ~8 fragments, 0 lucids, avg. 2.32 dreams and 0.26 fragments a night

YEARLY STATISTICS:
Recalled ~1075 full dreams and ~ 150 fragments
No nights without recall/drem journaling (except one night which mysteriously disappeared from my notes, idk when it was or what happened, maybe I didn't recall anything but I doubt it, I don't know though).
5 proper lucids and 10 semi lucids
Yearly average of recalling ~2.95 full dreams and ~0.41 fragments per night.

So as you can see I dropped off in motivation, effort and consequently results in the later half of the year, however I still maintained an increased level of recall compared to this time a year ago (and all those years before). SO lets see how I went with my goals.

-Write in my dream journal every night, no matter how much or how little I remember
WOOHOO I achieved this goal! This was my main goal for the year and I have successfully developed the habit of writing in my dream journal every day (lets forget about the unusual aberration shall we :p) I am sure this has helped with my dream recall tremendously, as well as motivation when looking back at everything I have dreamt of over the year. My overall average of 2.95 dreams plus fragments per night is pretty good, definitely better than the ~1 a week I had back when I first found dreamviews. as well as the slightly less than 2 from my December bootcamp. I am most proud though at my dedication in writing as much as I could down. I hope you have all enjoyed the constant DJ posts and the mega one just recently haha. At least the collection of dreams could be very interesting psychology/philosophically if I decide to analyse them (maybe I should publish them as a book lol).

-Post on Dreamviews every day
I don't think I posted everyday but I have certainly been fairly active here for most of the year. Overall I am satisfied with this goal, although I could definitely increase the amount of on-topic stuff I post.

-Meditate every day
Nope. Just nope. I maybe meditated twenty or thirty times this year, tops, which I guess is more than before and not super bad, but I never really got into the habit of this like I did with journaling. Guess I have something to keep on improving :).

Lucidity Goals:
I did not meet the goals I set at the start of the year, not by a long shot, but in hindsight I am not really disappointed with the lucids I had this year. Considering my lack of effort for nearly half the year, 5 lucids and 10 semis isn't too bad my my standards, might be an improvement from last year as well. There was a stretch of a month or so where I had three which was great, if I can replicate that it would be awesome.

-Gravity RC:
I kind of forgot about this after a few months, which is a shame, however I may pick it back up. Not to sure though, needs some further analysis.

So Overall 2016 was an awesome journey, I have learned tons about what works, what doesn't and how I work. It has been very tough and frustrating at some points but I wouldn't rescind this experience for the world. I might do one of these resolutions for 2017, I don't know, but for now, cheers and :offtobed:

1 lucid every 10 weeks on average, Ouch

How has your stress level been? It must be high stress is the Lucid killer.
What about sleep regularity or planning naps etc?

Devote at least every other weekend to LD, and aim for goal of 1 lucid per month :)