Tips on focusing my intentions while lying in bed?

Hey there,

I've engaged in lucid dreaming on and off throughout my life, but one of my recurring issues is difficulty focusing my intention to LD while lying in bed. I'll start out repeating my intention to myself, or visualizing, but my mind wanders away from that quickly and I start thinking about something else-- maybe things I have to do, relationships, philosophizing, etc. I do meditate, which helps somewhat, but I still wander quite a bit during the meditation process as well.

Do I need to remove distractions and complexities in my waking life? Should I stop reading books in bed perhaps? I'm curious what those of you who LD consistently do to focus.

Does anyone have advice on how to sustain the intention so that it takes up my entire awareness?

Thanks!

The mind naturally wanders. If you want your awareness to stay still on one thing, those are skills that meditation will teach you. I suggest Culadasa's Enlightenment Mind. We are reading it in our bookclub here: https://www.dreamviews.com/book-club...gust-21-a.html

That said, I don't think there's a need for you to solely and entirely focus on the intention. It's prospective memory. If you want to remember to go grocery shopping after work, you don't have to solely and entirely focus on that intention all the way until after your job. Setting the intention is as simple as that: setting an intention. "What's my intention going to bed? to remember my dreams, to recognize I am dreaming and doing such and such thing" Once you know it, you know it. You can intend to focus on your intent as you fall asleep. That is, whenever you spot your mind wandering, bring your attention toward your intention naturally. You are trying to fall asleep after all so you should not be exerting such important mental power forcing your attention. Let your mind drift asleep and when it remembers to think about your intention, good. Calmly celebrate that you remembered to think about your intention.

[Edit] and because your mind will try to wander, if you want it to wander longer on the subject of your intention, you might let yourself fantasize about lucid dreaming. This is all part of MILD already I guess.

I set intention by visualization too and it really helps if you make the visualization as enjoyable as possible . it shouldn't seem like a chore but something which is a fun little exercise . You don't have visualize getting Lucid repeatedly , you can just imagine what you will do after you get lucid , what stabilization methods you will use , What is your dream goal and how will you go about doing it .

You can also do a short mediation right before performing the visualization to clear the mid

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Originally Posted by wrinkledlion

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Do I need to remove distractions and complexities in my waking life?/…

Does anyone have advice on how to sustain the intention so that it takes up my entire awareness?

Thanks!

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It worked for me. It was better for me to spend most part of the day “thinking” about lucid dreaming than just a couple of minutes right after going to bed. It increased my RC rate considerably. That’s why being active in the forum here was very helpful. Planning lucid tasks or just wondering about What would I do if right now I realize it’s a dream! And so on

Hope it helps