Thread: FryingMan's DILD course workbook

Great job keeping up your enthusiasm.

We wouldn't wanna interrupt your records keeping with our posts, so please keep posting your progress, and if you have an DILD related question, please make sure you type it at the beginning of the post, so we are sure to find it. Happy dreams

Awesome awesome FryingMan!! PTCILD...haha love it! You keep such good records of what is working and what is not. I think beginners should take note. I tried out your "SSILD and then back off towards sleep when feeling too alert" method last night. Good luck getting your sleep schedule in order...let me know if you have any questions as I sometimes win that battle with the wife when necessary...but I don't have the request very often.

Hey that's awesome, from your DJ it looks like it worked out. I also did 2 quick fast SSILD cycles last night then jetisoned to relaxation. About 5 times, as I finally developed that "sinking deeper" feeling that signals sleep will be soon, wife who has the sniffles now started snoring, it was too much external stimulus even for my "back to sleep kung fu". And I got up for morning duty. Eventually saw the kids off, went to nap in one of their beds, had 2 back to sleeps, but alas no recall, probably just too tired. Bedtime 01:30, 1.5 hours behind schedule. When will I learn? Midnight = great night, later = just OK.

But had some amusing, if not long, fragments, so the night was not a loss. At one point a group of girls standing around, kind of laughing at me, I had a squeeze bottle in my hands (I think it had mayo in it), one girl came up and said "Oh, is that ONIONS!?" put her mouth on the squeeze bottle and I obliged by squeezing the bottle into her mouth. It was a funny moment. They asked something in English and laughed when I replied in a foreign language.
Also really weird fruit, stringy and inedible, everyone was having trouble eating it. I saw a "sexy" large cutting board made from beautiful wooden strips (in RL I want a cutting board of good size, the ones we have are all too small), and said "now THAT's a cutting board, with mine all the carrot slices fall to the floor).

Will think of an abbreviation for the modified SSILD, maybe SFSSILD, SF = sleep friendly. Or SFLDT for sleep-friendly-lucid-dreaming-technique

Wow.....a night filled with the wackiest, most random, hilarious dreams ever. I barely can remember anything from them, just a bunch of little fragments, but I know they were long and involved. How can anyone remember all that? It's probably impossible. I'm happy to come away with the fragments I did and the "tip of the tongue" feeling that there was so much more.

Reading sivason's epic WILD sex dream obviously gave me some "sexy" day residue, and ended up (me just watching) in a steamy encounter between Morgan Freeman and a really sexy (from the waist up at least) she-male. Hey not my thing but who can explain the SC's choices?

Back-to-bed nap resulted in a lot of them. 3 back to sleeps after 1.5 hours of morning breakfast duty, including needing to be a human alarm clock for younger son at first nap waking, woohoo! ( I needed to wake him up at 10am, and I woke up and *9:59* just before my alarm. Internal alarm clock FTW!).

LOL!

I need to go back and read some of Sivason's stuff and that dream in particular...some great tips in there! I had fragments only as well last night (7). I think my fragmentation was because I was primarily focused on sleep again...I have an event today and wanted to be well rested.

You know, I've been basically psyched all day almost as much as the afterglow of a lucid dream, just because I knew that during the sleep at least, it was a night full of wild weird interesting stuff. I remembered just little slices of it here and there, and a couple of longer sequences, enough to keep the "feeling" of the larger unremembered parts there floating in the background, even if just beyond the reach of recall.

I know what you mean. Our normal dreams can provide a boost to our day and motivation to continue LD practices!

Woot, LD #13 , got lucid from scary crow-girl dream. It took a few "I'm dreaming"'s to lose the fear feeling and believe I was lucid.
Once fully lucid, turned around, started to shout "Line 'em..." didn't get to "up", (this is my behind the back group summons wording), stopped myself, said, "Pickman, .... my teammate's name is ... Pickman" getting ready for some competition points.

Well, good old dreaming me starting in right away again on "Line 'em ...." and then I was awake in bed, and finished the sentence, "oh, shit."



Big dreaming night again, despite RL obstacles, this time I held on to a lot more detail than last night. It'll probably take me an hour to transcribe, I'm a few days behind, down to business!

edit: this matches my previous weekly high of 3/week. Still need to accomplish firsts for 4/week and 2/night . Feeling close, general level of expectation and positive feelings running pretty high now.

Meh, bad night, 1 measly dream, started OK, 1 dream @ ~3-4 hours is pretty good, but then no back to sleep. Had to work a bit for that 1 dream which may have burned the drowsiness. For some reason no drowsiness at all for an hour, finally found some, but then endless fidgeting from bed partner kept jolting me awake whenever I got close. Slept from exhaustion eventually but then had to get up early.

Gotta pay the piper for the good nights I guess.

edit: as for firsts (I like discovering these , I got 3 LDs so far in the competition this time. I'm thinking there will be at least one more (maybe several!) before things wind up!

I'm thinking there will be at least one more (maybe several!) before things wind up!

Expectation and intent can be powerful. I am surprised how lazily I go to bed sometimes, later realizing I didn't go to bed with LDing on my mind.

Got some nice recall around the 6 hour mark, and a short lucid to top of the night after a BTB. Not very satisfying, just becoming lucid in some room then waking up. Also no point scoring oppportunities , really wanted to get a bunch of competition points. But "lucid is lucid!"

It was actually pretty interesting in that I said to myself, "Hey, I'm getting that lucid feeling in real life again, .....whoa, I'm dreaming!"
I just walked "wide-eyed" into the room a few more steps savoring the lucid feeling, and being amazed that I was actually dreaming to start with, and then woke in bed.

(A few days ago I had a waking life lucid moment where everything seemed so bright, it felt a bit like becoming lucid while being awake.)

But that does make a new first!

+ first time 4 LDs in one week
(edit: actually counting more closely, it's 4 in 8 days, good enough for government work!)

It also helps the monthly goal accomplishment to look not so bad!

Hopefully you got successful wbtb +3 and remembered to count becoming lucid +5, so better than most recall points...and being on top of a good recall night with points there as well. I have also had some of those waking life lucid-like moments! Wonderful! It is like you see more than you previously were able to.

Congrats FryingMan on 4 LDs in a week!! I really like the idea of counting firsts, builds motivation and momentum!

Well after a full day of walking around with the "I'm a master lucid dreamer" act and intensely setting expectation and intent for LDs last night I had a rather "meh" night. No even "almost" lucid moments, a zombie "go with the flow" dreaming night. Had to get up earlier than usual for a planned event today, so lost a late morning sleep cycle.

Good news is that I didn't give up on recall. In the last sleeping period, interrupted with people getting up and doing things in the house, then my wife returning to bed, at first I thought I wouldn't get back to sleep in time to dream some more, but I did... and then when the alarm went off, I wasn't sure if I had slept or not or dreamt or not. "Might as well try to recall" I said half-heartedly.....and I asked the usual "What was I dreaming about?..." ...and some recall came in (it's amazing how it responds to that question!)! Some interesting moments, and new types of scenes.

Including the poem, "purple bees, kissing in trees." and the up-close visual of purple fly-lke insects with large insect-eye-looking triangular heads touching their weird fly mouth appendages together. And a flying rainbow minnow-thing with bright colors.

edit: I'm starting to wonder if I'm exercising *too* much. I'm swimming basically every day. Not every day is intense, but last night was (1km in about 27 minutes), I was very tired by the end of that.

I may try reducing the intensity a bit to see if I need less deep sleep. On the other hand I'm dropping weight consistently and feel really good so I intend to keep it up.

LDing is great for getting in shape! I don't eat sweets (or much of anything) close to bed, just milk and fruit, maybe some cheese & crackers. I'm careful about eating too much in the evening as well.

edit: just transcribed last night's dreams. There's more there than I remembered, actually a fairly normal night:5 dreams, 6 fragments, so not really a "meh" night after all. I know there's detail I forgot in between waking and recording. No almost-lucid moments, missed my childhood home again. I've got to keep up the mantra to notice it as I visit it several times per week.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

edit: just transcribed last night's dreams. There's more there than I remembered, actually a fairly normal night:5 dreams, 6 fragments, so not really a "meh" night after all. I know there's detail I forgot in between waking and recording. No almost-lucid moments, missed my childhood home again. I've got to keep up the mantra to notice it as I visit it several times per week.

It sounds like a good recall night to me. For the childhood home have you "practiced" seeing it during the day and "realizing your dreaming?" Maybe there is a tweak you can use to make it more likely to trigger lucidity. Perhaps mixing in some prospective memory as well.

Interesting night. Decided at 5hrs to do serious MILD and SSILD despite the wakefulness risk, and was in fact up for several hours (I got close to getting back to sleep a number of times, but every time there was some external disturbance prodding my awareness just enough to prevent sleep). Got up a couple of times, eventually went to the kitchen, got a snack, ate I think a little too much including too much sugar (sweetened granola and a few shortbread cookies), my stomach was noticeably churning a bit with elevated heart-rate upon returning to bed. (Should just stick to milk and perhaps a plain cracker). After that also took one 200mg tab Valerian, which eventually helped I think. Just couldn't get comfortable on either side, too hot/sore hips/shoulders, can't really sleep on back unless I'm alone since I snore that way, so I went for the final option, the stomach. I can sleep on the stomach but it's not my preferred position, usually only in late morning, and not always. This time I did! And I got....
LD #15

The dream location had perfect conditions for a competition point-fest: deserted, quiet, well-lit intersecting office corridors (white walls with blue office-style carpet): lots of close-by corners for summoning! I was actually *happy* to get a "boring" location! Alas, ARGH! Woke up right after finishing stabilisation and starting my behind the back summon of my teammate.

"OK, Pickman, let's get down to business!" stuck my hand behind my back ....and faded to awake in bed. 45-seconds to 1 minute maybe.

No memory prior to a few seconds before becoming lucid, I may have got lucid right at the start of the dream, which is perhaps why the dream felt fairly unstable. Hand rub, looked at hands while rubbing, felt the warmth, then my practiced stabilization kata. I may need to make it longer or emphasize looking around a bit more, right now the emphasis is on seeing and stimulating sensation in my dream body, which worked great again.

I was really anticipating wracking up those points!!!

edit: oh, and there was a *wicked*-cool ND powered-flying fragment (not just gliding, but superman-style), and I almost forgot it! Only came in at the final waking when I decided to review recall because I didn't have any for that final sleep cycle. In it I was imagining (again, I've got to figure out how to catch these imaginings!) flying down some hills to the city below, this time I saw the landscape zooming by beneath me, and said something like "Hell yeah!" or "Whoa!" I was again astounded at my ability to "imagine" this vividly!

It's really a tragedy how much awesome stuff we forget every night...

Awesome! I feel that you are close to a nice long LD!

Heh that would be great! I missed a juicy FA just now (if it's still a FA if you wake up but not in your wordly bedroom), and had a tiny little lucid ("lucid is lucid!") while waking. But very interesting: after waking from that lucid, sort of a new first, I fell back asleep and dreamed, (but alas, non-lucidly), to the same place in the dream world where I got lucid (well in a room to the side) before! That was the first time I can recall waking up and going back to sleep to (sort of) continue the dream!

Nice! Again, I like the way you are tracking your firsts and feel it is a good way to build momentum. And congrats on beating last months lucid total and we still have a few nights left in the month!

Originally Posted by fogelbise

Nice! Again, I like the way you are tracking your firsts and feel it is a good way to build momentum. And congrats on beating last months lucid total and we still have a few nights left in the month!

Thanks! Yes and the LDs this month didn't start until the 17th, so all things considered, my LD pace is more or less matching my goal. Approx 1 LD per 2 days, which is a great improvement. ADA/RC going well, I think LD #15 was perhaps a subconscious location-based lucid.

I knew with my wacky sleep schedule I'd have to "pay the piper" again, and did last night. Just a few fragments and a lot of awake time. With a new job starting up in a few days it's hard to keep a quiet mind, and staying in bed for 12 hours a couple of days in a row even if a lot of it is awake doesn't help with getting back to sleep at the 6hr waking. And to-bed time all over the map as always, sigh.

I hear you on wacky sleep schedules lately. I have had a number of days off and sleeping too much! Sleeping in a day or two on the weekends is one thing on an otherwise consistent sleep schedule but it has also affected my daytime practices which I tend to take a breather from on weekends (and apparently this carried over to multiple days off - but it sounds like you have been keeping up your ADA/RC which is great and will start paying larger dividends.

Originally Posted by fogelbise

but it sounds like you have been keeping up your ADA/RC which is great and will start paying larger dividends.

Yes, some days better than others. I frequently catch myself having dropped it. It's hard to maintain when I'm interacting with people and "doing life stuff" other than just walking around by myself or exercising. I think 6 lucids in 13 days is a pretty good sign that it's kicking in, I hope! I'm certainly keeping LDing on my mind just about all day, every day. And perhaps even the "I'm a master lucid dreamer" act is also working.

Valerian to the rescue last night. Should have used a touch of melatonin at bed-time too, maybe, but concerned about REM suppression and potential suppression of LDs, also I have tiny 3mg tabs and they're really hard to accurately cut for a smaller dose, will be buying 1mg tabs soon for smaller < 1 mg doses. Awake from 5h-7h or so again, just couldn't find the mental tension in order to release it. As you said, I think I made the mistake of trying too hard: "trying to sleep". I tried to cultivate a "que sera sera" attitude later and I fell asleep, amazing how that works .

Finished the comp with some recall, yay, no lucids though, but had a good amount, I beat my previous comp score (even at the 2week normal ending time), so I'm quite happy .

Happy New Year everyone!

I'll report in the morning (afternoon?) what champagne chased with some scotch will do to the dreaming tonight.

edit: yes, afternoon . And guess what: it turned out to be a LD power cocktail! Seriously, I didn't drink all that much, maybe 1/2 bottle champagne, a but less perhaps, and about 1/8 shot of scotch. And I didn't go to bed for several hours after drinking.

Woohoo, though, had my first DEILD! Short, too short, but it was fated to be this way since my wife was getting up out of bed and moving around the room, and I had my earplugs out at that point.

It was soooo cool. The details are a bit hazy, but I was recalling some dreams from the night, lightly thinking about them, glad that I had any recall at all, and decided to just try to drift off quietly and DEILD, very lightly thinking of one of the dreams.

The next thing I knew I was looking at some indoor scene in a hallway in a house. It was very bright, the lighting was very good. I thought wow, this is a really solid image, kind of puzzled at where it came from. I just looked for about 10-15 seconds. I stepped in to the scene and it was a dream! I got a lucid rush, turned up a staircase to my left, bounded up the stairs, exclaiming, "YES! It worked!" reached the landing at the top of the stairs, another hallway, turned right, a bathroom was right there, I walked into it and started to shut the door behind me, and faded to awake in bed.

Now *that*'s the way to start the New Year, with a LD on New Year's Day!

Now *that*'s the way to start the New Year, with a LD on New Year's Day!

I am so happy for you! And congratulations on your top finish in the competition!! You are on a roll!! To a great upcoming year in the dream world and the "regular" one!

Originally Posted by fogelbise

I am so happy for you! And congratulations on your top finish in the competition!! You are on a roll!! To a great upcoming year in the dream world and the "regular" one!

Thanks! Yeah I'm sort of like the tortoise in the competitions, not really any spectacularly high scoring dreams but steady good recall. A bunch of lucids this time which really helped. I'm going to work hard this month and do my best to give the upper div folks a run for their money in Feb. I have a long business trip in January so we'll see how that goes with dreaming -- about 3 weeks of solo sleeping so I'm anticipating some awesome dreaming!