The Path of Iapetos

[CENTER][SIZE="7"][COLOR="red"][FONT="Impact"]PLAN OF ACTION[/FONT][/COLOR][/SIZE][/CENTER]

[FONT="Courier New"]My first goal in my lucid dreaming practice was to find a way to easily induce at least one lucid moment each week. I have noticed that I have fulfilled that goal now and I have learned what makes that possible and what's not.

Dream recall is the first priority because that is first of all required to remember any lucid experience at all and second of all it makes the dreamer more aware, the dream more vivid and therefore more easier to become lucid in.
So keep a pen and a piece of paper by the bed and write down any dreams that you remember in the morning, after some time you will be so aware that you start to notice your micro-awakenings in the night after each dream and can record it in better detail and with a fresher memory.

The second priority is the bedtime. If I go to bed too late, my dream recall will be low, harder to be aware of, and therefore harder to become lucid in. Going to bed at an regular or earlier time gives the opposite effect:
high dream recall, easier to be aware of and easier to become lucid in.

The third priority is the mindset. A stressed out or worried mind mind is as bad as a late bedtime and therefore very important. That's why aiming for general higher awareness of the dream is better than aiming for the lucidity itself.
Easier to imagine and easier to fulfill. If one doesn't succeed one night you got to have the mindset of there's always another night.

These three simple steps is what have helped me induce lucid dreams every week frequently. I wrote this mini guide to remind myself of the power behind these factors and to help people who needs it learn from my experience.

Even though I get lucid often, it doesn't mean that they last for long. Usually 10 seconds to one minutes.
And I have tried all sorts of different stabilization techniques from spinning, hand rubbing, engaging the other senses etc. They work from time to time, but it's far from frequent.

So that is my new goal. Find away to easily stabilize the dream. I have been to focused on the lucid induction part so I have completely ignored the stabilization as can been seen in this Dream Journal. I have always trusted that my dreaming mind will become more clear automatically at some point and that I could figure out a way to stabilize at the spot.
And it did happen sometimes, but I was always to focused on the thoughts I had before I got lucid and focused on unnecessary things like trying to convince a dream character that they were dreaming, learning to fly when I am barely lucid, hitting on hot girls... You get the idea. So now I am going to have a plan of action, something that should be the first thing that comes to mind while I am lucid and doing it instantly. I will cycle through all the different stabilization techniques again to really see the effects of each one.

But that's the first priority in the goal of stabilization, a plan of action.
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[COLOR="royalblue"]Non-Aware (Dream)[/COLOR] - [COLOR="blue"]Partially Aware (Lucid Dream)[/COLOR] - [COLOR="navy"]Fully Aware and Vivid (Astral Projection(OOBE)[/COLOR]

This night I stayed up with my friend and we played Dead Island Co-Op. I was planning on going to bed early anyway, but the game bugged and made me lose all my best weapons so I stayed up in front of the bright TV-screen and had to do it all over again. So I ended up going to sleep, very late and my dream recall was destined to be bad.

[COLOR="royalblue"]I did end up remembering some dream from the morning though, but I have no dream recall from the night dreams. I also woke up from some bug flying around in my room around 03:36.

I was playing a high graphic version of some World of warcraft like game. I remembered that I were some kind of ice monster and I were doing a dungeon boss fight with some friends. My best ability was a channeling ice attack. I also remember that I canceled the attack by mistake, usually like I do in League of Legends and that my team mates got angry at me.

I were in some garden and I saw my parents smoking cigarettes and they both hate cigarettes for real, so I wondered why they liked them in this dream. I also took a cigarette just to do the same thing as them and make them think about what they taught me. I have some memory of me packing a bag and saying good bye to everyone.

In some other dream I was playing Counter-strike with a friend, but it was lagging so I tabbed back to my desktop and tried to see if there were any programs that made it laggy. I remember seeing that another game was running at the same time, that game seemed familiar to me in the dream, but I have no idea what it was now. Also when I tried to close some programs, more program popped up. Kind of like a gamer nightmare.

Then I was watching a soccer match, Barcelona VS Aston Villa. It went to overtime and the time was 20:00 in the dream and I remember that everyone started to walk away and didn't wanted to see the ending because 21:00 was too late. I also remember seeing an 7 year old girl screaming that she wanted to see who was going to win. I also remember meeting my friend Johan in this dream, but I don't remember what we talked about.

I woke up and wrote Barcelona - soccer match on a piece of paper and imagine that it felt so blurry and I wondered what was going on, then the dream changed and I was in the Dead Island game.

I was in a cage and zombies were approaching us in the distance. I see a man with a Electric Shotgun (Don't ask me what that is..) and he was going to shoot me. I screamed for help but nobody helped I got shot and woke up.[/COLOR]

It have been a while since I had a false awakening, but I will try to take advantage of these opportunities from now on.