Thread: Duration from attempting an LD to Getting one?

Actually, I wanted to ask two questions here.

1) <See 'Title'>

2) The duration from Attempting an LD to your best one so far.

I will use your answers for 'personal' research. No rewards for answering.

Average if like me the slow kind....3 to 4 months. If you are fast and do lots of checks then probably within a few weeks to a month. You may get multiple LDs because of previous ones but not likely the next night. Maybe next few nights. But the harder you try to LD the longer it takes, you have to figure out your threshold to intent and using the LD method. Too much intent = stress.

IMJ

I think probably about a month or so.
For the best it was a few months. Although one could argue the first is the best.

The WBTB, MILD technique is actually very powerful, so long as you make a serious attempt. I had my first lucid within a week of starting.

Can't really say that it's that simple. I had a 'natural' LD a few years ago, and tried since then to have more. I had about two a year that were terribly short. Once I got onto DV and started reading about induction techniques, dream signs, and etc., for some reason something clicked that hadn't after I read LaBerge and I got a pretty decent, long lucid on April 16, 2008, and I joined DV on 3/30/2008.

Hmm, so LDing is a skill then? Or is it by chance/luck? Or...both?

Originally Posted by DreamGlimpse

Hmm, so LDing is a skill then? Or is it by chance/luck? Or...both?

I think it's like those games they have at the fair where there are 100 fishbowls and you have to get a pingpong ball into the one in the middle. It's perfectly possible for the ball to just land in there by flat-out luck. But on the other hand, if you sit around practicing throwing pingpong balls all day, if you get a feel for how it bounces, where it ricochets, the physics of that, plus you develop the skill that is required to throw a ball and have it go where you want it to, then you win a fish.

Maybe the wind blows your ball off course. Maybe the wind blows your pingpong ball into the middle bowl. Maybe you're just that much of a hotshot that you can make it in one toss. Maybe you blow $100 on 200 pingpong balls and only win one goldfish. Maybe the game is rigged, and the middle fish bowl is higher or lower than the others. Maybe you're the next basketball star, and you just have a natural affinity for throwing pingpong balls into goldfish bowls, so it's not even a challenge. Maybe you worked your ass off to be that good of a thrower.

The world may never know......

But just because you don't know, doesn't mean you can't practice throwing the ball. Every once in a while you're guaranteed to get it in. And if you can make it happen more often, just by practicing and being familiar with the pingpong ball, why not!

I have no idea what I'm talking about. I always hated those games because my fish always died two nights later. Maybe bad recall is a diseased goldfish.

Originally Posted by DreamGlimpse

Hmm, so LDing is a skill then? Or is it by chance/luck? Or...both?

Getting one by skill is usually of higher quality, and you get more in the long run.

It took a month before a good lucid dream arrived. Four months to build a plot. I had lucid dreams two weeks into practice, but it took a bit for quality to pick up.

I have had 9 or 10 LDs since I got into DVs two months ago. Before that I had 2 other LDs that I could remember in the last 21 years of my life. So it is definitely possible for it to click for people right away.

You took that analogy way too far Shift roflmao
Anyway I think it's both chance and skill. You can be good but then suddenly have a lucid without trying. But just opening your mind to the possibility of it is the step that allows you to have them. If you don't have them naturally I mean.

Effort is needed to break the habit of non-lucidity, then through effortless habit lucidity compounds.

Conclusion so far:

To break the traditional 'non-LD' dreaming habit, belief that your mind is qualified (well, every one is!) to have them and a good amount of serious effort (WBTB or MILD for enhanced results) is needed.

Once the first fish goes in the bucket (during fishing...), 'practice' getting more LDs, more often. Chance and skill play an equal part in this. Once again, WBTB an MILD for 'desperate' shots.

Did I get all of it?

I don't think there's a straight linear line that one has to take to lucidity. Different things work for different people. I don't MILD. I rarely WILD. I don't use any induction techniques except to RC, and I get one a week. Imagine if I actually did use techniques. I do wake up in the middle of the night, but I don't consider that a technique in itself, unless you do other things like MILD, autosuggestion, etc.

If you constrain yourself to such a path, what if it doesn't work? Branch out, try everything, read about everything, consider what you think will work, what you think won't, why or why not you feel that way. I focus on reality checking because it raises awareness of your self and your environment. If that didn't work for me, but that was the only thing I tried, I'd be screwed. I spent two years trying autosuggestion and MILD, and it got me two lucids a year. Some people only do those and get fantastic results.

I would say: to break the habit, develop sufficient recall that when you do become lucid, you'll remember it. Change your sleeping habits to try to sleep lighter. Learn to do reality checks, and to question your state. Use autosuggestion and MILD (w/ self discipline) to remind yourself to become lucid, and not to move when you first wake up, and to build that recall. Try to DEILD during every brief awakening. Once you've done those things, you'd be likely to get a few lucids in, in which case you'd know what you were looking for and be better able to make judgments for yourself.

Well, good for you two.

How hard exactly did you try? On a scale of 1-10 (10 being most serious).

Originally Posted by DreamGlimpse

Well, good for you two.

How hard exactly did you try? On a scale of 1-10 (10 being most serious).

I was very serious about it so I guess a 9, a couple days in and my dream vividness and recall had already greatly improved.

I've been studying LD'ing for about 2.5 months, and have yet to achieve full lucidity. I have, however, on two separate occasions had dreams where I believed I was lucid (i.e. the dream was actually about lucid dreaming!), but was not. So, very close, but not quite there yet. I'd say within a week of keeping a dream journal my dream recall greatly improved. It fluctuates wildly; sometimes I remember 3-4 dreams full of detail and events, and other nights I get little or nothing at all.

Just gotta keep at it.

Originally Posted by DreamGlimpse

Well, good for you two.

How hard exactly did you try? On a scale of 1-10 (10 being most serious).

I'd give myself an 8. I was pretty serious about it.

I got 3 full lucid before i join this forum. It take me 1 week to got the first one and then i got the other 2 next week.

When i join this forum i try very hard to got one.

On the 3 day i got my 4 lucid and then i got 2 more the next weeks. But i have been sick in the last 2 days and didnt want to have lucid , but i have never got so much lucid dreams on one night.

Today i got 4-5 lucid, sleep 12 hrs
I was full lucid in 4 of them and half in the 5 dream.

So in the begining i try hard (10) to got one.
But now i see that i have easier to got one if im not try so hard maybe (2-3).

1. 3 days
2. About a month or 2.

So far, it's been about a year and a half of on-and-off "trying" with minimal success. There have been about two or three times where I've had a "this is a dream" moment, but I lose it almost immediately afterward, or it just happens as a passing thought that doesn't stick.