Looking back, there were two major turning points for me.
The first is a little hard to define. I guess, to sum it up, I’d say it was finding a method that works for me, given my own peculiarities as a dreamer.
The first few months of deliberately trying to get lucid were a bit frustrating because what I was trying to do was develop a habit of making reality checks, but my dreaming self would never actually remember to carry them through. What I think the problem came down to was that, unlike many dreamers, I almost never dreamed about familiar waking-life locations and activities, and I was often dreaming as a person other than my waking self – a person who was not in the habit of making reality checks.
I discovered by accident that I had much better success with WILDs, though, and once I had figured out the ideal timing, I could practically guarantee one. Of course, then I had to figure out how to deal with sleep paralysis and dreams with no visual element, which were only problems when I made the transition into a lucid dream directly from wakefulness. But there’s nothing like wandering around in a dream without being able to see for developing stability. I suspect this is also how I went from having no sense of direction to having a very good one.
The second was changing the way I looked at the world around me. I had been reading a book that gave a brief outline of a couple phenomenological thinkers, and there was a passage about the difference between really looking at the world and seeing straight through it to the concept you’ve built up of it. I was fascinated by the idea, so I decided to try an experiment. I thought of a beautiful place I had been a few months before – of what it had been like standing there looking out to the sea for the first time. I remembered how that had felt, and then I tried to look at the room I was in the same way, as if I were seeing it for the first time.
What happened was almost like a joint popping back into place – like I had somehow lost that feeling of connection with my environment at some point in the distant past but hadn’t realized something was off because it was just what I was used to. I felt present in a way I hadn’t before, more fully there. At first, it took effort to maintain that level of perceptual engagement, but it quickly became easier. And that marked the point at which I went from having spontaneous lucid dreams rarely to having them on a weekly basis.
Interestingly, when I revisited the book a couple years later, I was unable to pinpoint with certainty the passage that had given me the idea. I doubt it would have been useful to anybody else anyway – and I think most of the time, effecting that kind of perceptual shift isn’t such a simple matter. But it doesn’t hurt to try. And it definitely doesn’t hurt to be open to the idea that there might be room for improvement in this area without your being aware of it because you don’t have anything to compare it to.
Nowadays, the breakthrough I’d really like to have is being able to WILD reliably again. It was, as I’ve said, my go-to method, but since undergoing back surgery a few years ago, it’s been much more difficult to maintain that balance between alertness and relaxation. And in a sleep environment where I’m lucky to get eight hours of quiet, my preferred method isn’t possible anyway. But I’ve recently found more effective ways of dealing with soreness and stiffness, and life is looking like it’s actually going to slow down for a little while, so maybe I’ll have my chance soon.
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