Thread: Natural LDs with almost no technique

Wow dude... it does work to have the confidence and stuff... or something... but the only thing that lacked in my LD was focus and the clarity... I know I had it cause I had a blast in my dreamm....... THANK YOOOOOOOOU!!!!

If this method works for me tonight, do you think it will be a dream were I do a RC, or just enter the dream already lucid like a wild?
Will reply later if this works.

Originally Posted by RealityEnds

If this method works for me tonight, do you think it will be a dream were I do a RC, or just enter the dream already lucid like a wild?
Will reply later if this works.

I usually have RCs with this method. It's usually the first thing I think of anyway, just to make sure it's a dream so I don't kill myself by jumping off a high building.

Tried it, didn't work. I guess I'm not being confident enough. Honestly though I'm not sure it was that because I didn't have any substantial dreams I could've become lucid in anyway.

wow this looks like the REAL holy grail of lucid dreaming if you can get it to work, i'm definatly trying it. I'll bet it would work even better if you gave your mind a reason to have an ld, like vitamin B6 or that new subliminal mp4

Yeah Confidence IS the key.

However the fear of failure born from past disappointing results needs to be conquered to illiminate the main barricade to lucidity.

One way of doing that is thinking of this:

Think of any accomplishments in the past that you have deemed impossible for a long logn time and then suddenly one day you found out it wasn't and it just happens to you:

My personal one would be:
When I first started playing guitar I learned some very easy, basic chords of my dad. He then proceeded to learn me barre-chords in which you use your index finger to cover AND press all 6 strings of the guitar while youuse your remaining 3 fingers to hold the rest of the chord. When I first tried to play these kind of Chords I found my hand's muscles just wouldn't allow such a rediculous posture let alone allow me to actually play the individual notes on the chords with clear tone: it sounded muted and horrible instead. I thought:

"MAN this is Impossible! I'm NEVER going to master this!"

I was fully convinced it was practically impossible and that it would take me years and years to learn. But sure enough one day I found out barre-chords are not too hard at all and I got the hang of them pretty fast. It proved to be a MILLION times easier than I innitially THOUGHT it would be.


Another one would be:

In my teens I became heavily disappointed with the world and it's people and fell into a deep deep depression. I felt so completely messed up, beaten and down that I had no hope for a future being any better. I reasoned in a strange way, completely throwing perspective/relativation out of the window.
I thought to myself:

"This (all my miserable feelings about what happened) will never heal. I will never ever feel joyfull again after all of this"

I was deadsure that life wasn't ever gunna get any better than the sucky state it was in at the time. This was all based on past experience of a pretty sad, long period in my life.

Sure enough one day I saw the beauty of life again and started smiling and I became the happy, joyfull, sunny person I used to be in my early childhood again. I looked back at the times where all hope had gone and only pure survival mode kept me going: I now laugh at how I was inable to relativate that that sucky period in my life was just a period and as with all periods it would pass to make way for another.

Maybe the latter case is more recognisable to more people here since almost everyone has had depression to some degree where they felt hopeless, helpless and believed that things could never be "right" ever again. And when life made them smile again they saw that this though was an illusion.

Now look at those 2 examples and think of some of your own from your experience:

We THOUGHT it was impossible, yet one day we found ourselves accomplishing what we formerly believed to be impossible thereby busting the illusion.
Now Just that same way: The thought that reaching lucidity TONIGHT seems just as impossible, but past situations of accomplishments show that this is merely an illusion. Knowing that many things in life seem impossible when later on they turn out not to be impossible at all when you accomplish them, you should, logically, have more confidence about your Lucid Endeavors shouldn't you? That doubt is doubt you've seen before and also personally proved WRONG before.

Now what are you waiting for.

Now if you wanna get a good insight into how the whole Confidence/Capability thing works I really recommend you to read the following example:
You know the fear of failure is often far, far greater than the actual risk of failure. This is a little example that shows you how fear can make a task that is actually oh so easy seem near or completely impossible:

Take an iron beam, 15 meters in length and only a foot and a half broad, and place it with both ends on the rooftops of 2 skyscrapers each 10 meters apart. The gap the beam bridges is a terrifying 30 meter chasm.

Now you walk the beam, from one rooftop to the other, having to walk over that grizzly 30 meter chasm below you. I BET you have ALOT of trouble walking that beam straight and get off balance many times and, scared shitless, try to cross the beam with great trouble. You'll probably be crawling since keeping balance seems rediculously hard. The Truth is this is all a bold mind-illusion, because it ISN'T.

Here's why it ISN'T at all that hard, but you just THINK it is. Actually it's a piece of Cake: Put that same iron beam on the ground and try walking from one end to the other trying not to fall of. I BET it's EASY for ya. See what I'm getting at? The risks of loosing balance and falling off wasn't any greater when you tried to cross the bar bridging a 30 meter deep gap, but that risk sure SEEMED alot greater .

Confidence is once again the Key.
We need to discuss this more and more and then I reckon that this Topic could and should become a Great Tutorial that would be of great help to Lucid dreamers. Way to go! great Topic.

This topic should be stickied.
I have learned so much from this topic alone than I have in most years of my life.

Yeah I definitely think it should go on the tutorials page or something, I mean just look at how many people are successful with it.

wow, im excited to try this...but im not trying to rain on parades...i would have called this a mild...without the wbtb?

cuz you sort of impose LD thoughts on your self and the confidence that follows? and I know that works..cuz when mild works for me...i expect not hope for lucidity.

i will try this too, goodlukc everyone

This does not work for all people.

And you're going to respond with "What you mean is it doesn't work for you, and of course it doesn't work for you if you have that attitude about it!"

I'm not sure what else I can say to convince you of it, short of telepathically sending you a record of my thought processes before bed where I affirm that I can have LDs, have had LDs in the past without even trying to, and will have an LD tonight because it's easy and natural and the direction I want to be taking my life. Nor can I possibly hope to project to you the positivity and optimism with which I embrace that message and drift off to sleep still feeling. It's a great mood lifter... but it has yet to make me lucid in the least.

Originally Posted by Spamtek

This does not work for all people.
It's a great mood lifter... but it has yet to make me lucid in the least.

It will once you've build up your confidence a 100% and eliminated all unnececairy doubts about Lucid Dreaming. It's got nothing to do with positive thinking. It's not wishfull thinking because wishfull thinking is thinking with your heart. This is rationally thinking and gradually understanding that, if you're currently unsuccessfull with lucid dreaming, the doubt of succes, even the slightest residue of it, is exactly what keeps you from success. And nothing else, unless you drink alot of alcohol or smoke alot of weed prior to bedtime for instance. It's more like to teach yourself to stop negatively thinking which all unsuccessfull lucid dreamers do to some extent.

I know it is hard to believe that Lucid Dreaming isn't hard when it has been so unsuccessfull for you in the past experience. It's hard to let thoughts go that have fixed themselves in your beliefsystem and to find out we're not just a bunch of positive-thinking irrational hippies, but that we're people telling you the truth about how you are MUCH more capable at achieving many many things than you believe you can. My "Walk the 15 meter beam"-example and "Low Confidence due to past failure"-example are the perfect examples of that.

I will try this and I pray it work, but my confidence is very low as I suffer from depression. I take a lort of meds (for depression, blood pressure, cholestoral, diabetes, acid reflux) and I hope they do not intefere because I seem to have this need to LD, I don't know why. I will also conitnue to use some mugwort tea occasssional as well as Galantamine and B6 as well occassionally to build up my neurotransmitters. If it does not work tonight, however, I will not give up, I will keep trying the confidence method and pray it works in the future. Who know, with practice it may turn into a nightly adventure. Thanks for the info.

lvlindless can you upload that confident track again?

Wow! It works! I have been trying to LD for almost a year now, and I havn't had any in the past couple months, and I rarely remember dreams anymore. Last night I read this post, and as I went to bed, I convinced myself that I was going to have a lucid dream. I just made my mind "know" that I was going to lucid dream, and I fully expected to. Then I just didn't think about it anymore so my inner dialogue wouldn't kick in. I woke up naturally around 6-7 hours after falling asleep, and then I drifted back to sleep and had a lucid dream! It was so short, and by the time I did a reality check and realized I was dreaming, it faded and I woke up. But at least I had one, and it as very vivid! Thanks!

lvlindless, I owe you!

I had a Lucid Dream last night...after reading this maybe 3/4 days ago. I hadnt changed anything..and did almost 0 RCs during those days.

i think this is worth trying...you will LD eventually..whether its a day or a week!

and i would say this can work for anyone..providing you get enough sleep, good recall.

That's a good idea! I'll try it tonight.

Originally Posted by void

lvlindless can you upload that confident track again?

Sure, here it is again.

http://download.yousendit.com/FDED0AE5409EB290

Originally Posted by Spamtek

This does not work for all people.

And you're going to respond with "What you mean is it doesn't work for you, and of course it doesn't work for you if you have that attitude about it!"

I'm not sure what else I can say to convince you of it, short of telepathically sending you a record of my thought processes before bed where I affirm that I can have LDs, have had LDs in the past without even trying to, and will have an LD tonight because it's easy and natural and the direction I want to be taking my life. Nor can I possibly hope to project to you the positivity and optimism with which I embrace that message and drift off to sleep still feeling. It's a great mood lifter... but it has yet to make me lucid in the least.

I'm sorry, but this DOES work for ALL people. Yeah, my response is going to be quite predictable, but it's true. The only reason you didn't have one is because you weren't confident enough. You might have a smidge of doubt in your subconscious somewhere that causes you to think of LDing as a difficult state to achieve.

You ever notice the people that go "LDing is SO hard! I've tried for months and I can't do it!" almost rarely have LDs? While the people that go "LDing is easy, I can do it without effort." Manage to have one every night? Or whenever they want. Now of course, some things are still important. Dream recall, knowing how to do RCs, the amount of stress in your daily life, and the amount of sleep you get are still pretty important.

I've seen techniques on this site that literally have 15-20 steps involved. HOW am I going to have an LD when I can't even remember half the steps? And it's counter intuitive because you start to think "Oh... If I mess up one of the steps it's not going to work!" and then you do all the steps, and all the effort, and nothing. You don't even have an LD! That's why I believe confidence is around 95% of importance to having an LD.

It's really cool how much success you guys have with the technique. Keep it up! I realize an aspect of it is taken from a MILD, but I still like to think it's its own technique.

I've tried this technique two nights in a row, but I still haven't had a lucid dream. Something very strange has been happening, though.

For example, last night while I was falling asleep I imagined a dream I had the other night about being on the edge of a desert with weird gnarled trees all over, and I imagined doing a RC and becoming lucid. I decided that this was going to happen, there was nothing I could do about it, etc., and then thought about other things until I fell asleep.

Both nights that I've done this same process, I woke up around 4:40 AM, and remembered just having had a fairly extensive dream. I then fell asleep for 10-20 minute intervals, having one dream at a time before waking up after each one. This went on until about 5:30, at which point I fell asleep until about 9:00 and had a REALLLY long dream (today it was about an entire first day at school, complete with 6 full classes and a presentation at the auditorium).

So both days, I've remembered like 5-6 dreams easily. The weird thing is, my dream recall is usually fairly low, maybe one dream a night if anything. So I suppose this method is doing something.

Tonight I realized that if I woke up again repeatedly, I should attempt a DEILD each time. I did, and was unsuccessful. Does anyone know of anything I'm doing wrong, some reason I didn't have a LD under such seemingly perfect conditions?

Hooboy, here were go. lvlindless:

The problem I see with the confidence method is not the method itself but the claims its proponents throw out into the fray. Get me straight: Confidence can do nothing but help. There is no fathomable way that being confident makes you less capable of attaining lucidity. Confidence helps you have a lucid dream. We agree on this. What we don't agree on is your extension of that positive claim, from "confidence helps you LD" to "confidence makes you LD," transforming it from one contributing factor out of many to one that supercedes all others in efficacy.

If you sign up to perform in a musical and walk out onto the stage opening night never having even read your lines, it won't matter how confident you are. You can have 100% faith in your abilities, and know without a doubt that you're going to nail this performance, but when you open your mouth to start singing you're going to fall flat and fuck up anyways. I could pump myself up for days before showing up to compete at an Olympic sprinting match, but that won't stop me from getting trampled into the concrete by the competition. There are at least some situations where factors beyond confidence play a crucial role in determining your success or failure.

So we turn to lucid dreaming and instinct says: "This is different. LDing is mental, so the only things that can make a difference are our thoughts and attitudes. If I think I can, I will. If I think I can't, I won't."

Originally Posted by lvlindless

You ever notice the people that go "LDing is SO hard! I've tried for months and I can't do it!" almost rarely have LDs? While the people that go "LDing is easy, I can do it without effort." Manage to have one every night? Or whenever they want.

I don't dispute that. I myself am a person who goes "LDing is SO hard!" and almost rarely has LDs. Every wildly successful LD-at-will lucid master I've ever met has been confident. But you're asking about correlation, not causation. Confidence correlates with LD success. But this doesn't prove "If I think I can, I will" any more than it proves "If I do, I'll think I can." Where's the chicken and where's the egg? What causes what? How can you know that success (or failure) doesn't come from both directions?

Why is it that the first of two people, neither of whom know what LDing is or how difficult the popular literature makes it seem, can obliviously and effortlessly have LDs every night of his life and yet the second one never have a lucid dream at all? Don't we have to conclude from such a situation that people can be inherently talented at lucid dreaming just like any other skill? And wouldn't actual ability then ("I can") have to play a part in lucidity just as you say confidence ("I think I can") does?

You say confidence is ability, but I say confidence augments ability. Some people do, honestly, profoundly, have an inherent ability to have a lucid dream, and some people have a remarkable inability to reach that state. Most lie somewhere in between. Confidence can add to that ability, and for many people can push them over the edge into lucidity but I think confidence has a limit to what it can do. It might help a marathon runner hit the finish line first against his peers, but it's not going to help an amputee get there, either in first place or ever at all. This isn't to say that anyone is beyond all hope of attaining lucidity, but that no amount of faith in their abilities will get them there if they don't actually have a certain amount of ability to have faith in in the first place. Other, more mechanical methods - god knows what, I've tried a hell of a lot of them - have to build up ability the old-fashioned way before confidence can begin to play its part.

So I say again: This does not work for all people. Your defense, at least from your side, is perfectly unassailable though: every word I say against your methodology is "negativity" you can look at through your current methodology to brush aside as proof of your own point without never needing to really consider the arguments contained therein.

I'm not trying to be negative, although I'm certain my pedantry and contrarianism comes off as such. I just want to express something that's driven me insane for years, where I disagree with confidence gurus and have them use my disagreement itself as proof of their own point rather than them trying to actually grapple with my arguments. Maybe I'm wrong seeing it that way, but this is how people proposing this method have always come off to me in discussion. I see harm being done in proposing childish belief in your own success for some people whom it might benefit more to actually be trying more actively skill-building methods instead.

I've done this method nightly for a week with no results, and complete lack of dream recall for the past three days. I intend to keep with it - you have no idea how much I'd love to prove myself wrong.

Originally Posted by Spamtek

Hooboy, here were go. lvlindless:

The problem I see with the confidence method is not the method itself but the claims its proponents throw out into the fray. Get me straight: Confidence can do nothing but help. There is no fathomable way that being confident makes you less capable of attaining lucidity. Confidence helps you have a lucid dream. We agree on this. What we don't agree on is your extension of that positive claim, from "confidence helps you LD" to "confidence makes you LD," transforming it from one contributing factor out of many to one that supercedes all others in efficacy.

Yes, confidence just by itself will not lead you to have an LD. Like I said in previous posts, there are still things of importance. Before you can become confident about having LDs, you first need to KNOW the information behind them. You need to know about reality checks and how they work, and you need to have dream recall (at least remembering one dream per night).

Originally Posted by Spamtek

If you sign up to perform in a musical and walk out onto the stage opening night never having even read your lines, it won't matter how confident you are. You can have 100% faith in your abilities, and know without a doubt that you're going to nail this performance, but when you open your mouth to start singing you're going to fall flat and fuck up anyways. I could pump myself up for days before showing up to compete at an Olympic sprinting match, but that won't stop me from getting trampled into the concrete by the competition. There are at least some situations where factors beyond confidence play a crucial role in determining your success or failure.

Your example doesn't really apply in this case. The musician doesn't know his lines, so his confidence doesn't really matter in determining whether or not he will put on a good show. He can't, it's impossible. Well, a lucid dreamer DOES know his lines. He knows how to carry out Reality Checks, and how to recall dreams. Now confidence plays a big role here. If you KNOW what you have to do, then the only way you will do it is if you're absolutely confident that you will. I'll try to give you a better example.

Say... You're trying to drive a car. You've went through the driving academy, and now you know the rules of the road and how the vehicle operates. There isn't anything that you don't know that wouldn't make you successful. Now, the only role is confidence. If you are unsure, and not confident whether or not you will be able to drive the car, then you'll walk into the car and just sit there. You won't turn on the ignition, and you won't move. You'll simply stare out of the windshield and there won't be any action from your side. Now, if you're totally confident about it, then you'll perform the actions required. You'll turn on the ignition, you'll press on the gas, and you'll be on the road. I believe the same applies for LDing.

Hi Ivlindless:

The conclusion I've reached after many years of research is that some people have a natural ability for LDs and respond easily to many techniques. Other people simply don't have a natural ability and for them it takes a lot of work. Confidence is important, but the bottom line is that LDs seem to be ENTIRELY dependent on neurotransmitter levels in the sleeping brain and this varies from person to person.

Many, many, many times I've been absolutely CONFIDENT that I was going to have a LD (after doing a lot of RCs, mantras, MILD, etc, etc. etc.) but didn't.

lol Zen, you just successfully summed up my entire objection in four sentences. Three cheers for brevity!

Originally Posted by ZenVortex

Hi Ivlindless:

The conclusion I've reached after many years of research is that some people have a natural ability for LDs and respond easily to many techniques. Other people simply don't have a natural ability and for them it takes a lot of work. Confidence is important, but the bottom line is that LDs seem to be ENTIRELY dependent on neurotransmitter levels in the sleeping brain and this varies from person to person.

Many, many, many times I've been absolutely CONFIDENT that I was going to have a LD (after doing a lot of RCs, mantras, MILD, etc, etc. etc.) but didn't.

When I'm truly confident, I don't do anything. When I really fully know that I'm having an LD that night, I just go to bed. Seems like your confidence was faked, because the more things you do the less confident you seem to be.

Thanks for the tip I will definitley hold on to it!