I think it's like any skill -- some people have a knack for it, and some don't. That doesn't mean the knack-less have no hope of achievement, it just means they must work hard and put in consistent effort.
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I think it's like any skill -- some people have a knack for it, and some don't. That doesn't mean the knack-less have no hope of achievement, it just means they must work hard and put in consistent effort.
As I am fond of saying - If it were easy, everyone would be doing it! :chuckle:
LD #186 DJ entry
Not the best night of dreaming but a couple nice very vivid/present sequences culminating in a dry-spell-breaking LD. Not the best LD, short, but hey at this point, "lucid id lucid" so it's a beginning to what I hope is a new level of dreaming for me with my renewed practice.
LD #187 DJ Entry
Well, this is good news! Another LD this morning, this one longer and I managed about a minute before heading into caveman. Stabilized by looking up close at something, and the visuals became SUPER clear, bright, and high res, and remained that way until I got lost in girly stuff.
I really need to rehearse remembering non-girly goals so I have many choices immediately on hand. Getting really tired of losing LDs to caveman, so I'm going to really work on de-emphasizing that as a goal and holding dreams and lucidity for as long as I can.
Telling myself, "if I fall asleep now I WILL get lucid" and together with the TYoDaS approach, is working very well!
Exciting stuff FM! Perhaps you can integrate the beyond caveman goals into the beginning of those rhymes you make to remember lucid goals. If the remembering of goals tends to occur further into your LD then at least it reinforces those goals and then you can also integrate it into your initial lucidity ritual (pat down etc that you do or did in the past).
I haven't been doing any sort of "just got lucid" rituals, either practicing in waking or doing them in dream. I need to return to those.
If you find it easy to get back to, great. If you find it overly complicated, maybe try simplifying it or reducing the steps (while I sit here and tell you to add a step - of this goal in question, lol!). You know all of this of course, but we all probably need reminders at one time or another…I know I do.
Summer 2016 competition post links/summaries
The comp *exactly* overlaps my business trip which means I lose several nights to travel and will be jet lagged the whole time. Dang.
Tasks, goals
Nights #1, #2: 2pts (new total: 2)
Night #3: 4 pts (new total: 6)
Night #4: 0 pts (new total: 6)
Night #5: 35.5 pts (new total: 41.5)
Sending good lucid dreaming vibes your way FryingMan to help break through the jet lag!
Well finally another big night, tons of dreams, 3 (maybe 4) LDs, one particularly vivid/present/bright & clear and long-ish. I took a one-a-day multivitamin before bed (but I do that fairly frequently) and took 2mg melatonin after struggling to fall asleep for about 30 minutes since it was a very stressful day and was having trouble quieting my mind. Despite the stressful day I had great recall, it was a "dreaming all night" kind of night, my favorite.
The one thing that I did differently yesterday was read a post on another site about the importance of reviewing that "feeling" of getting lucid and getting up a goal to look for it in dreams. I took it to mean incubating via visualization the getting lucid moment, so I reviewed past LDs and replayed them and the moment of getting lucid. This gives more anecdotal evidence to my emerging theory that success at DILD style LDing is heavily, and perhaps even entirely, driven by incubation. Intention, MILD, reflection/intention moments, all heavily emphasize visualizing the experience of getting lucid in a dream. Dream incubation is the practice of placing a thought/experience into your dreams by thinking about it during the day. It works because we tend to dream about that which we think about a lot during the day, and what we're thinking about as we fall asleep. I also think all-day RCs ala Hukif's gravity RC is a form of incubation: getting the trigger thought/feeling into a dream, triggering lucidity. I also told myself as I would fall back asleep during the various wakings that I would be lucid in my dreams. Also in a PM DoubleHelix mentioned that he affirmed to himself before bed that dreaming is a very important of life, and that recalling dreams well is very important. I used to do that, but had stopped doing that for a while and I just started doing it again after reading this from him.
DJ entry
I didn't quite make 200 LDs by my 3rd LD practice anniversary (I started 2013-08-22), but pretty close! My anniversary is also my "this is the one day a year where I allow myself the option of quitting" (ala Sensei) came and went without thinking twice. I can't imagine a life without recalling dreams every night! More frequent lucidity is always on the menu. I think a mixture of my unified theory (attention, reflection, recall) plus Tibetan Dream Yoga plus general mindfulness, and this specific visualization/intent will yield great results. I'm especially hopeful for the incubation approach given the success this last night. I still want/need to establish a regular mindfulness meditation practice. This is the year!
Congrats on your excellent night of dreaming and lucid dreaming!!! :D
Your incubation theory makes sense to me…I tend to agree! You are really good at boiling things down to their essence, I wish I had that gift! It's just one of things makes you such a great DVA Teacher!!
On this infamous day I had an awesome night: TOTM LD, 1.5-2 epic non-lucids, and a couple new firsts! Haven't had any new firsts in a while...
+ first recalled dream of the night is a TOTM LD (#202), taking place somewhere around 2.5 hours. That's probably my earliest LD ever, and certainly my earliest TOTM LD
+ first on-purpose teleport: I found myself lucid in the void/blackness, and I drew a (invisible, I wanted it to be a glowing oval, oh well) portal with my finger and stepped through back into a full visuals scene in a city. Lost lucidity soon after that but that was cool!
DJ entry
Congratulations FM!! I have always really liked your idea of celebrating firsts. I think it is a great way to keep LD practice fresh by taking note of new achievements and I think it is also helpful to have a workbook to log it in.
Two very nice achievements!!
Had a really good September: 10 LDs in September, and 2 already in October including a TOTM success last night in a super vivid, bright, fun LD. I bit shorter than I'd like, but aren't they all? This one was about 1.5-2 minutes: DJ entry. Dreaming is vivid, and recall, in the high part of the cycle at least, is very good, lots of detail and variety across multiple wakings. LDs are coming earlier in the night. I tend to be lucid while it's still dark outside now. When I have time, I'm almost always making it back to sleep now via my combination of a variant of SSILD, relaxation breathing, and continual letting go. I also mix in dream yoga visualizations.
My latest new thing: visualizing a dot moving in a clockwise circular pattern. Kind of like a computer "busy" icon spinning around. That helps quiet the mind and make progress towards sleep.
October 2016 competition summary
Intro post with 3-step and personal goals
Night 1: points: 9, total: 9
Night 2: points: 4, total: 13
Woohoo 600 DJ entries :).
Had two very interesting dreams last night (out of a total of 8 or so): jumping around hills in a 2.5-d land (land was 3d, but all the scenery was "painted" flat on the ground like in a 3d video game).
"The Squids of New York" -- giant two-legged squids swimming, breaching, and sauntering around the shoreline, I did a nose pinch RC (who wouldn't) and entirely ignored the implications of it and just started concentrating on my breathing haha.
Getting slowly back into dreaming. Had a LD two nights ago and a long dreaming night last night, very vivid, lots of visual and experiential recall, very present dreams, DJ here
With such an awesome night of vivid dreaming last night, I'm really looking forward to tonight! I *will* get to bed by midnight!
Getting back into the swing of practice. Re-reading Holecek from the beginning. Had a nice lucid walk today. Noticed a number of things that had changed (areas of the park now fenced off, a pier missing from the river). Doing peg mnemonics for remembering certain moments (did 1-gun: guy sitting on a stump, 2-shoe red haired woman with curly hair, 3-tree a pharmacy sign next to a tree, so far today). Trying to have a lot of "just two breaths" heightened awareness moments to get back into the swing of self-awareness and mindfulness. Sleep patterns remain a challenge: I like reading about and working on other hobby stuff late into the night. How'd I get here? By what path? A PM target of "every time I see a taxi" that I did a few days ago is still with me strongly and triggered a few times today already.
Dreams not coming back in intensity/vividness/length that I would desire yet. Probably mostly to do with terrible, highly variable sleep schedule. I've started voice recording in the morning, need to voice record at night and get a mini-WBTB along with it.
Had some pretty vivid moments last night, actually. A longer storyline based on intrigues at work. Some freaky eyes staring at me from another apartment's window across the way earlier in the night. I gave them the finger until they went away! haha. The memory of the experiences is fairly clear, but my presence and "solidity" in the moment in the dreams felt weaker than I'd like.
Going to start incubating some TOTM tasks probably. That always has helped in the past.
I plan LD reading and meditation before bed. Going to make it a regular thing.
Gained some weight back from last year's successful fitness program. It's gotten out of hand. Started the diet portion again today. Calorie tracking, and soon back to the gym. Hungry already :).
^^^ let's do this shit together, lucid as fuck, living a sharp life that we consciously choose!
Woohoo, I managed to get to bed before midnight, set solid intention before bed, had a fairly long dreaming night (early recall a bit hazy as I did not record in the night) with some very vivid "you mean *that* was a *dream*!?" dreams, and even a short stint of lucidity following a double-take RC (nose pinch, continue, WAIT a minute...I could breathe? Nose pinch again, yup, then, unfortunately, "hey babe!" and lost lucidity shortly after that haha (but didn't wake up!)).
Every morning now when I get up: "I've woken into a dream!"
Last night during little wakings I was aware that I had woken, and some times woken from a dream. Progress! At about 4-5 hours waking for a bathroom break, just couldn't muster the will to stay up. Still not a fan of WBTB. I will, however, work on MILD more and the TYoDaS throat visualizations (starting with red pearl, moving on to AH and then lotus, finally lotus with symbols on the leaves like in Tony's picture).
It's not a night like some I've had, but it's a start in the right direction: DJ Entry. A bit of recall from multiple wakings!
Atrocious bedtime last night (3am?), but I slept in and had a great dreaming night last night, including a lucid after a late-ish morning unintentional (long phone call) WBTB. Some very vivid, present dreams. Starting to get some of my former recall abilities back at long last. Building excitement for dreaming again.
Daytime awareness work growing. Keeping dreaming on my mind. Doing illusory form and "I'm dreaming" mantra. Working to maintain awareness and steady presence in diverse situations, despite the pushings and pullings of grasping and aversion. Recognizing more and more now the moment I've come out of such push/pulls. Initiating a conversation is a very reliable awareness gap: major goal now is to maintain awareness and the idea of dreaming (reflection) during all conversations, even intense ones. That's the grail right there. Also holding location, movement, and path awareness at fairly high levels. Really trying to notice all transitions and do RCs and reflect on location.
DJ for last night
Atrocious bedtime does not work all of the time! Same late bedtime last night and no recall! So it's a roll of the dice. Regular & early-ish bed time (how many years now?) remains a challenge and is still very important for recall for me.
I almost WILDed this morning trying on a lark the "The Phase" indirect method via phantom limb wiggling! Check it out, video link in the DJ entry. Book link