Verrrrry interesting night last night :banana:! On another thread fogelbise recommended I tried DEILD since I have a number of wakings during the night. I read a little bit about DEILD before going to bed. On my first waking as I became aware that I was waking up, I remained still, eyes closed. So I decided to try a DEILD. I did not have a dream immediately in my mind, so I asked "What was I dreaming about?" and the dream scenes right away came flooding in. I chose a few to visualize and tried just to fall back asleep. Alas, I did not make it in to the dream and ended up fairly alert after 10-15 minutes when I decided to MILD and go back to sleep, but I think I had a successful "try" -- I remained still despite my body "screaming" to move, my hands were very uncomfortably painfully numb from my position, and I had to badly go to the bathroom. Maybe if I had not had these very strong body feelings I may have made it! I stopped because I felt like I was tending towards wakefulness rather than sleep (although I did "dip" towards sleep a few times) and I didn't want to miss more dream time. (I also got a bit tired of hearing the "Love Boat" theme song playing in my head over and over :)
The Love Boat - YouTube, starting about at 0:50 ).
So I went to the bathroom, quickly voice journaled just keywords from the scenes I recalled, immediately went back to bed and did MILD (back to the DILD topic at last :) ). It took a while to fall asleep, but I used the trick of visualizing turning a "distractions" knob to "zero," where it clicks and a little green light goes on (had to do this a few times), and trying to detach myself from the process of falling asleep (so I'm not paying it much attention, like I just don't care), trying not to think about my body, and I did get back to sleep in not too long a time (maybe 10-20 more minutes, it's interesting that time seems to move faster in the "real world" than in the "trying to go to sleep world". In any case 10-20 minutes is way better than 2-3 hours).
No lucids (you can bet I'll announce the first LD with trumpets blaring here!), but I did end up having a unique, first-ever-for-me very vivid dream! It was not vivid visually, it was mildly hazy on visual details in fact and took place in a slightly dark room (in fact I thought in the dream about turning up the lights), but my "awareness" was vivid, if you know what I mean. My consciousness was totally involved, I did not get close to thinking about whether it was a dream or not, but I was fully "there." I recalled a continuous scene of awareness and interaction that lasted maybe 5-10 minutes before the "wacky random" dream stuff started happening again.
It was one of those mornings where you wake up and go "YES!" pumping a fist in the air :banana:. I've had one other like that in the last 3 weeks (a flying one, which was more visually vivid but still had that heightened sense of awareness, presence and confidence that was so awesome). In fact in this dream I also was very very confident, no hesitation at all about what I was doing.
Can't wait for the LDs, but having vastly improved NDs along the way is really really cool.
Question: I've started to add the "In my dreams I see my hands and realize I'm dreaming" to my daily mantras. I did see my hands in my dream last night but nothing triggered. I just started it, though. Is it counter-productive while working towards the first LD to switch mantras around, perhaps I should stick with "The next time I'm dreaming I remember to recognize that I'm dreaming?". The hands mantra seems attractive to me as well, I may just repeat it during the day during RCs along with my usual, unless gab you think that's too much switching around?
By the way, is there a limit to how many intentions one can successfully set for oneself? I'm up to about 5-7 now, including remembering dreams, staying still, having interesting dreams, waking up after dreams, and of course, the MILD mantra. Maybe if they're kept short and clear there is no upper limit? I'm interested in other's experiences here.
p.s. gab I thanked my subconscious profusely this morning :) and asked for more. In fact, I've been doing this only for the past few days (thanking my subconscious, and putting in a few requests for what I'd like) and I got the sort of dream I was asking for!