Thread: 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

You know, I find this way works best too. The confidence thing is so important with lucid dreaming and people just forget about it. Dream control for example, people just ned to believe what they want will happen and it most likely will.

Wow! I had one of my first LD's last night and this was like...exactly what I used to get it! I just said to myself, I'm going to have a lucid dream and went to bed. Sure enough, I had one! Great idea!

wow that sounds really good!!!
i will try it out and let u know how i get on! thanks!

Yes this worked for me once with no preparation. That night, I just had a feeling that I was going to LD and I got very confident. Lately, I get very enthusiastic to go to bed though I think I'm more hoping than actually firmly believing that I will LD. Thanks for the post lvlindless, I'm going to start this right away!

Oh, I was hoping Admins could put this topic in the "Attaining Lucidity" Center of the forum. I made it in General by mistake. x_x

Moved this important topic to "Attaining Lucidity" as requested.
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Your right, i think this is the only thing you need to have LD.

I find confience is EVERYTHING in real life as well. You wont get no where without any.

Im going to try my best to get as confident as i can tonight

So how do you feel about RC's then? Should we still do them? And by imagining that we become lucid, should I imagine being in a certain place in my dream when I become lucid?

Originally Posted by Blaze Haze

So how do you feel about RC's then? Should we still do them? And by imagining that we become lucid, should I imagine being in a certain place in my dream when I become lucid?

Well, I only do RCs when I really believe I might be in a dream. I don't do them on timed schedules, because that sort of dulls your mind and you really don't question your reality as much. It just sort of becomes a zombie thing like "Oh, it's 3pm, time for an RC."

When say... Something really weird happens in real life. In a situation where you just go "Woah... that's strange..." Those are the only times I do RCs. So at most, I do about 5 RCs a day.

But when I say imagine become lucid, I mean just sort of seeing a dream sign - like... a talking cow or something. And then you go "Oh... I'm dreaming." You can even throw in an RC in the visualization. It shouldn't take more than 30 seconds to get it down, and to go "Okay this is what I'm going to do later in my dream."

Just reading this boosts my confidence! Like I started thinking about this also and although I havn't had a LD yet, I know that my dream recall is A LOT better! But it seems to be a VERY logical method!

Do you think trying this in conjunction with my sleep deprivation technique would work? Both are 'non-methods' somewhat, and it takes me forever to fall asleep without having stayed up. I'd imagine that I'd get even more vivid dreams and great LD's because of the REM stackup.

Just seen this thread from Mes' DJ. Weird how I went to bed last night with this mentality, without reading this post, and had an LD as per the Lucid Task Post quoted below. So I think it is right, that you have this confidence and it does work. Wish I had found this thread earlier, only problem I have now is I wont be able to LD at home, as per the red parts below!!!

Originally Posted by AdamA

Soooooooo close

Ok so I am staying in this hotel at the moment as away with work. And I knew I was going to LD before I went to be as have not had one since I got back from holiday a couple of weeks ago, and had loads on holiday, so knew coming away hear would mean I would be LDing in no time.

The Dream:
So I was lying on my bed, the TV was on, right next to my bed (but in this room it isn't, its on my desk) and I felt really sleepy, so I thought I know I will have an LD, and right away, I was lucid, i touched my laptop keys, which was on my bed to confirm I was. So I got up, but it was really dark, so I thought I wonder which DV member is in my bathroom, I thought this would be the easiest way to meet them. So as I walked, it got darker and darker, and my ways to increase vividness is to ask a DC but there were none about, but i remember my last LD a DC told me to spin anti clockwise only because clockwise (which is the way I had been doing it) didn't work. So I span, and I got really dizzy, I couldnt walk straight, so I thought I cant be dreaming if I got dizzy! I thought about leaving the room to find the DVDC but thought well if this is not a dream I am going to look pretty stupid walking out in my boxershorts :p

So I tried to look out the window and couldnt see anyone, it was getting really dark by now, so thought I must be awake then, I will just go back to bed and try get lucid again, then went to bed thinking I must post on DV to tell them about me sleep walking thinking I was lucid and spinning in my hotel room.

So in bed I thought I will just have another dream and become lucid, this is when I had an FA, and was awake on my bed (FA) thinking damn! My mind tricked me, I was lucid after all. Meh, I will try again tomorrow must get up for work, and my alarm went off (in the dream) so i snoozed it.

Next thing I know my actual alarm goes off and I wake to realise the whole thing was just a dream FA loop and felt gutted that I could have maybe met a DVDC if I had just performed a simple RC.

Anyway my mini dry spell looks to me over, although I am worried about going home now, incase this puts a mental block on my LDs for good

Ah well, off to meeting now, here is hoping for better results tonight

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.

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.

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

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.