SuperSN's Workbook

So, for all of you who have already seen my intro thread, feel free to skip this post. It'll just be a copy paste of my introduction and the first 3 days of my challenge. paigeyemps recomended that I start a workbook here. Paige, YOU HAPPY?!

Hello, my name is Spencer, I'm 16 and 2 months away from 17. I'm heavily involved with playing video games and I do so at the very least 20 hours a week. I can guarantee that 99% of that is on the PC (Steam - supersn), with the other 1% being Dungeon Raid on my iPhone when I'm in a restaurant or something. I'm also interested in writing, and I'm currently writing my first short story, basically a buddy cop adventure in space. Lastly, I just stared doing Zazen meditation this week. It's really nice, even if I have a hard time keeping my mind focused.

I've been interested in lucid dreaming for quite a while now. My best friend introduced me to the concept back when we were in 6th grade, and I was fascinated by it. He wasn't very successful, and I assume he dropped the endeavor shortly after. It's possible that he's tried again, but I haven't talked with him about LDs for a while now. Years down the line, probably in freshman year, I stumbled across the /r/LucidDreaming subreddit, and it rekindled my desire to obtain an LD. I began fervently researching LDs, what techniques there are, other's success stories, etc. The thing is, I lack discipline. I have a rather hard time following through with and finishing things, and so I never got an LD. And then I tried again. Same thing. I forgot to do regular RCs (counting fingers, finger through hand, breathing through closed nose), I didn't consistently write in my dream journal, and I gave up. This cycle of getting really excited, trying, and failing has gone through probably 5 times by now. That would make this the 6th attempt. I'm hoping that by joining Dream Views, participating in discussions, and browsing regularly, I can finally, finally get an LD.

I read about the 1 week challenge and decided to try it out. Obviously, I missed the date by about 3 days, but that's okay, since I'm not going for points or whatnot. I'm doing this so that I can fulfill my years-long goal of getting an LD. That being said, last night I felt was a very good precursor to the beginning of the challenge week. You can read the dream I had in my dream journal (I would link, but I don't have permissions). This afternoon has been pretty good for me remembering to do RCs. Unlike my previous RCs, this has the added reinforcement of asking "Am I dreaming?", something that I haven't done before. After asking the question out loud, I survey my surroundings and make sure they make sense, ask myself where I came from, and finally proceed with my aforementioned RCs. Hopefully that'll be enough safety nets should one element of the sequence fail.

Tonight I'll be trying an LD through DILD, WBTB, and MILD. I'll report back on this thread tomorrow to give you all the scoop. Thanks for reading!

DAY 1:

Wow. This first night was, to put it nicely, a complete disaster. Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong.

So first up, I usually sleep from about 1 AM - 11 AM. I have an odd sleeping schedule, I know, but at least I've gotten it to be fairly consistent. So when I went to bed after unwillingly leaving #fun, I started out by saying my chosen mantra, "I lucid dream", and it was working fine. After about 30 repetitions, I started thinking of scary shit. We're talking White Face from imscared standing in the crack of my bedroom door, turning around to see bug-eyed monsters hanging on my bed, Jeff the Killer (scarred by screamer of days past), etc. etc. you get the point.

I told myself to start thinking of non-scary awesome things. I did. Angels taking me away from my bed... AND THEN DEVOURING MY FACE. Lying in a field of soft grass... AND THEN IT SUCKING ME IN AND KILLING ME. After a while of trying my hardest to dispel these unpleasant machinations of my mind, I succeeded. I thought about petting my dog, wonderful nice things, billiards pockets, interestingly enough. Scary thoughts = gone. "Good job, Spencer," I told myself. Now I could resume MILD. Cool, cool. Only now, I had a mixture of Waltz Op. 34, No. 1 (Chopin), Hungarian Dance No. 4 (Brahms), and Farandole (Bizet) stuck in my head. I had been playing a simplified version of all those songs for the piano that day. I had no choice but to try to match my mantra with the songs. As such, completing a full saying took much longer than previously. I don't think I pulled of the MILD portion of tonight very well. I fell asleep, 30 minutes after I was supposed to. Off to a bad start.

Remember those scary thoughts I was having? That never happens. Never. I also pretty much never have nightmares, or at least no more than once a year. So tonight of all nights, both had to happen. Since I can't link to my DJ, I'll just paraphrase my Counter Strike House of Horrors dream. I was playing real life CTF in giant pyramids, and crazy shit started to happen. Spooky school hallways, 30-year-old-men with no pupils, burlap shadow monsters, and generally freaky stuff. So I woke up at around 3:30 in the morning. I fell asleep again.

Next time I wake up, It's to my dog freakin out to her own dream in between my legs. She's breathing hard, her chest is pumping, I get a little worried, so I try to wake her up. Crisis averted.

I'm pretty sure I woke up at least one more time during the night, but I'll just skip to my alarm. I read that the best times to wake up for WBTB is either 4.5 hours into your sleep, or 6, so I set my alarm for 4:30 in the morning. I woke up to the alarm, as I had planned. I wrote down some notes for my CS Horror dream and replied to Raven's Intro thread. I again tried for MILD, but by this point I knew i had shattered all my chances for getting an LD tonight. I had my Target Antique Liquidation dream, and woke up this morning around 11:30.

Summary:

Tonight was a disastrous night for getting an LD. Scary thoughts kept me up for far longer than I had anticipated when I first tried to fall asleep. Those scary thoughts caused a subsequent nightmare. Several other times where I woke up during the night pretty much obliterated success for WBTB. I'd like to make an important note that I typically have long, uninterrupted nights of sleep. What happened tonight was an anomaly, and I'm a little upset that of all nights this had to happen, it had to be last night.

YA BLEW IT, BRAIN.

Oh well, better luck tonight, I suppose.


DAY 2:

Last night was much better than Day 1 in pretty much all respects, meaning there's not a whole lot to report on. I went to bed at 1:10 or so, and set my WBTB timer to 5 AM to compensate for the time it'd take me to fall asleep. Taking Penny's advice, I tried my hardest to really believe I was going to have an LD tonight, and I tried visualizing what the LD would entail, that being flying. For the time it took me to fall asleep, I imagined me soaring in the sky, doing all sorts of flips and tricks and having a great time. I tried to feel how I was going to do it to, imagining wind blasting out of my feet.

I woke up at 5, got a drink of water, checked my Twitter feed, and promptly fell asleep, again trying what I did at 1:10. Alas, no success, but at least I had wonderful dreams about flying in a plane.

I wonder if I should try another method tonight.


DAY 3:

Yesterday I felt like I was doing a pretty good job of remembering to do RCs, there isn't much to do in WBTB besides just that, and my dream recall is pretty okay, so I figure the one weak link in my method is probably MILD (If you haven't guessed by now, I didn't get an LD last night). I think the primary issue is most likely that after about 10 min to the rest of time it takes to fall asleep my mind drifts off and I forget to say the mantra and visualize.

I don't suppose anyone has any suggestions or alternate things I could do to help me on my way to success? I don't think MILD is working all that well for me. And there's no way I'm going to try ADA, even if it may have an extremely high success rate, because I don't have that much sustained concentration in my life. WILD, maybe, but I've never tried it and I have a sneaking suspicion that if I can't maintain attention to do MILD and much less ADA, I certainly wont be able to maintain attention for WILD.

sigh

Also, I forgot to mention yesterday that the dream I had with the green wooden plane inspired me to change my plans for when I (eventually) get an LD. Instead of just simply flying, I'm going to summon my green plane companion and fly around in him/her. Maybe even have a dogfight! That being said, I need some suggestions as to what his/her name would be. Charlotte has already been offered as a name, but I want to hear what you guys think.

I sincerely apologize for the wall of text/poor readability. I wrote a lot in my intro thread.

DAY 4:

Last night I decided to alter my MILD method a little bit and see how it works. Instead of trying to repeat my mantra and visualize as I'm falling asleep, I instead say and visualize for about 10 minutes or so before attempting to shut off my brain and fall asleep as soon as possible. The first time I tried doing this, the period after MILD lasted far too long. I went to bed about 5 minutes later than I intended, but that thew off my schedule for WBTB quite a bit. I had to at least stayed up 20 minutes after MILD ended, putting the time of falling asleep no earlier than 1:50, about 20 minutes after I was supposed to.

Even so, I woke up feeling not so tired. I read Arch's thread on DILD and he commented that he doesn't feel tired if he's woken up at the right time during REM. I don't know if that's true for me, but seeing as today was the only day in which I've drastically changed how long I've slept, that may be the case.

Doing MILD and falling asleep went far more smoothly after WBTB than before. It felt like I was able to fall asleep far faster than before, no surprise there. Still, no lucid dream. I'll try setting my WBTB timer for 4 hours instead of 4 1/2 hours.

Better luck tomorrow, I guess.

Having a good time reading your posts! I find it really interesting to compare notes. It helps me discover what works and things that I may try the following night. Keep it up!

I am meditating at mid day today with binaurals, and then planting the idea of a lucid dream in my head. I'll let it sit all day as I reality check and stay aware of my senses almost all day. Then right before bed I will do a MILD with a Mantra and deep meditation without binaurals. Then I will be trying a WBTB four hours in.

Good luck tonight!

~Raven

DAY NOT-REALLY-5:

I decided last night I was just going to take a day break because of finals, so there's nothing to report today. That being said, today I might try meditating with binaurals.

MIGHT. They still freak me out.

Hi, welcome to DILD class.

You see, I have never really tried only MILD. I started out with "Holy smokes, I could really do this?" bevilderment when reading DV first time and some RCs and mantras. It had worked really well for me, so I stuck with it. I just added some daytime awareness in a form of a short awareness question "wow, am I dreaming?".

I know you do something like this, but do you really believe that you are dreaming? And when you do RC, do you believe they will work, because you are dreaming? That is an important part of practice.

Then you say about scary thoughts. You don't really have to visualize for DILD. Just do the practice during day, then just before bed and only mantra as falling asleep. My favorite mantra is "next time I'm dreaming I look at my hands and realize I'm dreaming". For this, you have to practice the hands RC, which you mention you do. You may wanna take a look at Collection of techniques for DILD.

Ok, keep me posted of your progress and please ask, if you have any specific questions. Happy dreams:alien: