Lucid dreaming on a busy schedule - need motivation

Hi all,

I'm aware that similar threads exist, but I just wanted to post my situation and get some advice as I feel my angle is slightly different.

As a bit of background, I'm 29 with a 9-6 weekday office job. When I was at university and had a flexible working schedule I was very much into lucid dreaming - I know a lot of the theory and techniques and was able to maintain at least 2 lucids per month, which was a lot for me. As far as I know from theory and experience, you really need these 3 things in order to become lucid:

- A dream journal
- Plenty of RCs
- At least 7 hours sleep

Which brings me to now. Outside of work, family life is also particularly stressful at the moment - to cut a long story short my mum is going through some personal issues and temporarily living with us (essentially 4 people sharing a 2 bedroom flat, and we usually have to alternate between who gets the sofa). We also have a particularly loud and annoying cat. Because of work, family stuff and the necessary me-time I usually find myself going to bed around 1am and waking up at 7:30 each night. I don't currently keep a dream journal and I don't do RCs, although the latter I know is easy to incorporate even into a working day.

So basically, I have a busy schedule and quite a lot of stress which means my quality of sleep isn't always great. RCs I can and will start doing again no problem. But I need help motivation-wise to get over the more general hurdle.

I tried this twice already since starting work - make more time for sleep and dream journalling so that I'd have better quality dreams and more lucids. The problem is that I didn't see any results, and am stuck in a bit of a catch-22. I WANT to have good dreams and lucids, but to do that I need to sacrifice what I consider valuable waking time. And even after that time has been lost, there's no guarantee that I'll have the lucids I want. I know this is unrealistic but I've been questioning myself on and off whether putting in the extra effort is worth the payoff in this case.

I think having more vivid dreams with more control, and more lucids would really benefit my waking life, but on the other hand I don't want to feel like I'm losing time in my already busy life with zero benefit, if or when I see no results. I'm just looking for some encouragement or advice from someone who may know where I'm coming from.

Sorry for the long post, hope it all makes sense!

Azra

You should try focusing on finding ways to establish habits that result in higher awareness your life and the state of consciousness you are in. Establishing a solid routine of it is work towards the development of the skill most critical to in facilitating lucid dreams. After I joined the Army my life had reached a point where I was in the same situation as you, with no real time or energy to invest in LDing. I still don't really now that I've finished serving and work an 11 hour night shift at a factory close to the town I ;ive in 4 days a week. I suppose I have an extra long weekend to try things out, but I'm so drained that I typically do little more than sleep the entirety of my weekend away as it is.

Despite that, I still regularly have between 55-90 kucid dreams a year, yet I don't put any effort into actually trying to LD at all. Whether or not I have LDs doesn't really matter to me so much any more, they're simply very pleasant gifts I receive at random and typically in large bundles at once. Not only do I feel like I appreciate them more, but the reason I still have them is because I've found a way to integrate the habit and practice of maintaining higher degrees of conscious awareness simply as I go about living my life, with that being the goal in itself. I've not only learned to appreciate my lucid dreams more, but my non-lucid dreams as well.

Really, my experience with dreaming as a whole is much more fulfilling and holistic. Rather than divide the dreaming experience into semi-arbitrary classifications of non-lucid and lucid when considering, analyzing, and appreciating my experience of them, I view whether or not I'm aware of the fact I'm dreaming as merely part of the experience of dreaming as a whole. As a result of perceiving the dreaming experience this way and regularly maintaining a higher level of awareness as I go through life, the Lucid Dreams that I still get all the time (I actually had two of them just two days ago) happen regularly all on their own as a natural consequence of this. On top of that, it fits perfectly with my lifestyle and current life situation.

Interesting perspective! I do agree with you when you say the goal isn't about lucid dreaming. Regardless of whether the dream was a good dream or not, I really enjoy having those highly vivid, long dreams where you wake up and they leave a lasting impression on you all day. I don't have a "bucket list" of things I want to do in a Lucid Dream, I just want to explore another world while I'm asleep. Sometimes a non-lucid dream will have such an interesting character in it that I just want to know more about them, or the location of the dream will stick with me for ages. This is what I'm after, with lucidity being an added bonus I can use to explore them more.

So yeah, in terms of what I can do. I'll start RC'ing again no problem, but I think you're right, perhaps my awareness is something to focus on for now. I'm horrible when it comes to awareness in waking life - I'm the kind of guy who walks into lamp-posts while reading something on my phone....haha.

Do you have any introductory topics I could have a look at on how to actually achieve that higher level of awareness? Thanks!

Lucid dreaming and working is definitely doable, but as you said, one needs to put at least some effort. I liked snoop's perspective on working towards higher awareness.

I think we might be also falling in a bit of a misperception regarding efforts and awards here though. Anything you actually do to improve your dreams or your awareness in general is having an immediate effect on you, even if it isn't that obvious. We are living in ever busy and distracted lives, so anything that helps train your memory (like journalling or mindfulness) will bring benefits to other areas of your life. Paying more attention to one's inner or outer environment works to sharpen the very tools you use every second of your being - your mind and awareness.

So, I definely recommend to look at dreaming as a life-enhancing discipline. To work your way up lucidity, one naturally needs to start small and build a strong foundation from there. Even if you can't keep a lenghtly dream journal, for example, try getting into the habit of jotting down at least a sentense a day, answering the questions who, what, where was your dream about.