Natural LDs with almost no technique
I find that techniques for inducing LDs can sometimes get a little too complex, which in turn sabotages your chances of having one. Seems like most techniques skip over the "confidence factor." I find that when I'm TOTALLY confident about having an LD, I'll have one that very night with little or no technique.
So what I did a few months ago was I built up my confidence every single night to the point where I didn't doubt for even a second that I wouldn't have an LD, and I simply went to sleep. That night, sure enough I had an LD.
On the second night, I did the same thing. I really wanted to see if I would have an LD two nights in a row, as I had NEVER had that happen before. So that night, I built up my confidence again and bam, another LD.
I didn't have one the third night, because I was convinced that I proved I could have an LD with only confidence and nothing else.
So here's my... NON-technique, if you will.
1) Imagine yourself becoming lucid, and imagine it as a future event. Imagine that it really IS happening tonight, and that you can't do anything about it or stop it.
2) Go to sleep with this same confidence right away, before you begin to lose it through negative self talk (inner dialogue). Once you've got the idea in your head that you're becoming lucid no matter what, don't dwell on it. Just let it go, and go to sleep. Don't come back to this idea, no matter what. Empty your mind and sleep away. You'll fall asleep pretty fast.
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(I believe that when you repeat an affirmation too many times as you're falling asleep, they can actually hurt your chances of having an LD. You should only say something once or twice with REAL emotion, because just mindlessly babbling "I'm going to realize I'm dreaming, I'm going to realize I'm dreaming, I'm going to realize I'm dreaming..." will actually cause you to lose motivation and might actually cause you to lose the belief that you will. Saying something once, but with an emotional response should plant the seed in your subconscious that you are confident about whatever you're trying to do.)
I would love for anyone to try this technique and tell me how it goes. It's worked numerous times for me, so it should for you as well. Comments would be appreciated. =D
Five years of irritation unleashed
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."
Quote:
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.
