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Shout out to Sageous for his writings on the fundamentals of lucid dreaming, self-awareness and memory. This morning, I woke up and stayed awake for 50 minutes to meditate. The key thing about the meditation was to keep my mind - my awareness - HERE AND NOW. My mind continuously got caught up in thoughts that were in the present moment. Every time that happened, I shifted my awareness back to present events like my breathing, my hearing and my sense of touch.

This leads me to believe that SSILD so effective because it forces the practitioner out of his or her own head and into the present. The mind is quieted from thoughts that have absolutely nothing to do with the current moment of just sitting, hearing, feeling and breathing.

I went back to sleep at 6:50 am and still meditated to keep my awareness in the present moment. Some time went by and I saw a giant image that looked like a webpage in front of me. I focused a bit on the image and I felt my body go numb. Then, a false awakening happened and my reality check was looking at my bedroom window. I noticed that there was a towel being used as a curtain so I knew for a fact I was dreaming. I got out of my bed and began to explore.

I went out into my hallway and looked at the entrance to the kitchen which was pitch-black instead of usually illuminated, further confirming that this was lucid. I woke up and repeated the relax-meditate steps mentioned earlier to get back into another lucid dream. That ended too and I looked at my alarm clock to find it was only 7:10 am.

Just woke up from an afternoon nap that was a lucid dream + an almost astral projection event.

It was weird because during the time I was dreaming, I felt like I was having an OBE. I was in my bed still on my left side. I was shifting around and attempting to pull myself out of my body with an imaginary rope above me. I FELT MYSELF RISE but I could not see a damn thing.

After fluctuating between sleep and wakefulness or perhaps false-wakefulness, I finally managed to find myself in what was a clearly a lucid dream - in my bedroom. The irony was that the lucid dream was not clear and 'clarity now' didn't really work out too well. The dream kept fading in and out because I wanted to explore but the DREAM-SCENE WOULD NOT LOAD FULLY. If that makes sense. It was like a poor visualization.

I did however get to accomplish my dream goal of seeing the moon in the night sky; just a small goal to confirm that I can control the dream scene somewhat. I went inside a house next to me just to see what the dreamworld would load up for me.

It was blurry and hard to move to say the least.

Now for the big part, the induction technique:

All I did was just lay in bed relaxed as possible with a clear mind.

Yup, that's it. WILD with breath as an anchor.

In other words, I lie there and make sure that MY FOCUS IS ON MY BREATH. Any weird thoughts from the day? Back to the breath. Textbook meditation I believe. Hynagogic Imagery/Thoughts/Sounds and other foolishness that was distracting? BACK TO THE BREATH.

Until I felt 'The Transition' which was the weirdest shift of consciousness I have ever felt. I have no words for it other than it felt like mind was getting twisted and squished. When I was in the dream world, I tried my best to keep a clear mind by focusing on the dream world via my senses.

The focus on something external has - for me at least - keep my mind quiet and aware. I reckon this is most likely why SSILD worked so well for me because the focus on external stimuli quiets the mind down from chatter and other non-sense. I am no master of meditation, but this is just my guess. I am still in pursuit of the goal to have a lucid dream at least 5 nights a week of better length and quality.

On a side note, during the process of having random gibberish thrown at me to let me know I was falling asleep. I gently asserted that none of the information was real so I wouldn't get sucked into a non-lucid dream. Then I returned back to the breath as best as I could.

This is going to be my technique going forth.

I had a lucid dream last night via the DILD method. I was aware that the dream scene was weird and that is when I became lucid. I decided to climb a fence and go into somebody's house and that is all I remember more or less.

The previous day, I was attempting to do all day awareness. Essentially, I forced myself at randoms intervals during the day to become more aware of what I was seeing, hearing, touching.

Dream recall is absolutely important. I didn't realize that I had a lucid dream until one hour after I had woken up from it. When I realized, then the entire sequence was recalled to me.

Long story short, I was dreaming that I was looking at the clock on my computer screen and noticed that it instantly changed. I immediately did a reality check and found myself to be lucid. Went outside of my house for a little exploration and that is about it.

I have been having trouble lucid dreaming ever since I got a proper alarm clock to do proper WBTB. I haven't been getting lucid dreams or at least I don't remember them at all.

Onward and upward

I have done the WBTB method several times this morning; incorporation both SSILD, FILD, and MILD but no go. I only was able to achieve a few non-lucid dreams featuring my backyard and an internet personality.

My theory is that WBTB is effective when I actually get out of bed and move around for 20-30 minutes before going back to sleep like I had originally done in my "Mission Accomplished" journal entry. I haven't been doing that as of late because I don't want to lose to too much sleep and I am under the impression that WBTB techniques are most effective when you don't move around too much.

We shall see. Until next time.

Lucid dreaming is this funny thing where if you do it once - or several times - you feel as if you are on the cusp of discovering the secret to having lucid dreams at least 4 times a week. You begin to make firm intentions that you will have a lucid dream the next opportunity to get to go sleep.

Then it doesn't work and you feel like you are back at square one; that you don't have a clue how lucid dreaming works. The good news is that I am starting to hone in on the common denominator between all of my successful lucid dreams for the past week(2).

In the 7 years that I have been trying to 'Master Lucid Dreaming', it has become abundantly clear that there is no brute-forcing lucidity into the dream world via mantras, writing, visualization or some other method. Most of my lucid dreams have happened when there has been little to no intention to do so. I simply became aware and realized that I was dreaming and began to explore my dream only for the dream to end 10 seconds later.

I have two more techniques I would like to try.

Fall asleep faster by not staring into the back of my eyelids. Stare off into the distance; through your eyelids. Visualize passively looking at a far-away point such as the a cloud in the sky or a tree top in the horizon. The purpose is to relax your eyeballs and the muscles that control them.