Thread: FryingMan's DILD course workbook

LDs #269 (2022-07-16) and #270 (today, 2022-07-24)

Starting to come to terms with my now seemingly traditional 5am waking (doesn't seem to matter when I go to bed). I've started taking the advice of sleep therapists and not lying for long periods in bed awake. If I'm not making progress towards sleep (like 20-25 minutes), I get up and sit in a nearby chair. This helps my body cool off back to the lower temperature that's needed for sleep onset (and allows my sheets/pillow to cool off back to where its comfy to be in bed after returning), helps my body shed its "bed tiredness" and to develop again more of a "bed craving." I meditate, try to calm down, think of dreaming topics, and hopefully I get tired (starting to yawn is a good sign), and then I'll return to bed and relax.

Today I did this and returned to bed with the intention to WILD once I started feeling the familiar sleep onset signals, but it was going very slowly so I abandoned that, setting intention that "the next thing I see is a dream...soon I'll be in a dream" and aimed for 100% relaxation and sleep. Eventually I found myself in a scene that I recognized almost immediately to be a dream. I'd been incubating an encounter, and one presented itself immediately. I took a moment before engaging to make a concrete affirmation, "I'm dreaming," which I require before I count it as a lucid.

I'm starting to get the feeling that any time that I can get back to sleep in scenarios like this, I will get lucid with very high confidence.

I'm also starting to understand the phrase from other dreamers who say, "I can get lucid any time I want to." It's sort of like losing weight -- you can also do that any time you want to, but not everybody actually does it, because it takes effort, determination, dedication, and willpower/intent. Same thing with LDing "on demand" -- it takes effort, determination, dedication, (preparation!), and willpower & intent. The fact that one can do it if they want to, doesn't mean it's necessarily easy or without effort!