Thread: Quilly's Uber Workbook

Welcome Quilly!

So the ADA is helping with dream vividness, but it sounds like you need a little more self-awareness to get some lucid dreams. The method I use came from Sageous' RRC method which can be a little complicated to get a handle on. Basically if you really stop and look around in wonder with the mindset of "Wow, what if this were a dream right now?" (or at least really stop what you are doing) perhaps while tapping your finger on your nose to put a little more of "you" in view while looking around (yes, it may just be your finger and perhaps your nose - but part of you can be seen while looking around and it can help bring home the point that you are the one being self-aware right now...). It is also good to follow this up with a question like "What was I thinking or doing about 15 minutes ago?"

I have just started trying out WBTB MILDs, where I mentally repeat "I am dreaming" to myself as I drift off.

Great! WBTB can really help. Are you doing this in the middle of the night, after about 4.5 to 6 hours of sleep? You may need to experiment on how awake you need to get before having success. Let me know if you have any questions or are finding any challenges with WBTB.

If you like the advice here or anywhere on the forums, don't forget to hit the like button at the bottom.

Hi,Fogel! Thanks for replying to me.

I'm reading up on Sageous' tutorials ATM.

I woke up 4 hours naturally after falling asleep last night. I had set my alarm for 6 hours after I'd fallen asleep,but figured I'd just do the WBTB anyway. So I got up,got a drink,and went back to bed. I repeated the mantra "I am dreaming" and visualized for a few minutes before I lost focus of the visualization, not so much the mantra. I'm not sure why,but even if I fixate on something that I'd love to do in a lucid dream (eg. flying), I lose focus really quickly and catch myself reflecting on things like what I'm supposed to do tomorrow,or a conversation I had with someone that day, or a scene from a movie or game. I know it's not necessary to be visualizing or doing the mantra until the second I fall asleep (right?), but I'm not sure what I should be doing now. Any tips?

On a different note, last night in a dream I noticed something that struck me as 'odd'. I saw a giant nail file. Like,the length of my arm. I remember thinking "Oh,that's a little weird." and then moving on. Is this a sign I'm getting closer to having a lucid dream?

My main task right now is to find some solution to tackling this lack of focus I seem to have when I visualize during WBTB MILDs.

I don't have much experience with MILD Techniques but i'il try to help you

Is this lack of focus happening all the time during the attempt or would that show up after few minutes?
I belive it might be just part of falling asleep process which is encountered consciously during WILDs

WILD Attempts might result in experiencing random thoughts overflowing our mind or sudden lack of concentration (We are falling asleep afterall)
But from what i've readed it seems like your attempting MILD and not WILD

If your falling asleep too easily during MILD you should consider getting up for a little longer
There are two factors in WBTB
- The Amount Of Time We Were Sleeping For
- The Amount Of Time Of Staying Awake/Beyond Bed After Waking Up
Experiment and you will find your perfect balance for MILDs

In addition to what MisakaMikoto said above, you might also want to use a mental checklist (or a bedside written checklist if you have to) to clear your mind of things like what you are supposed to do tomorrow. It could be popping into your thoughts because your subconscious has deemed it important to address the next morning. If you address this worry or reminder (by checking it off mentally or by written checklist) it can then be released from your thoughts at that moment and you are free to concentrate on your visualization or whatever you choose. Practicing meditation during the day can also help you with focus. I really latched onto SSILD early on and I could practice doing it during the day to get the hang of doing it without letting a lot of distractions get in the way and thus keep my "focus."

A bit of a dry stint with dream journalling over the weekend due to a hectic sleep schedule. I discovered I am much less likely to remember my dreams if I go to sleep in a very tired state. That'll be rectified tonight as I'm gonna get an early night.

I have been making some gains with mindfulness practice. I am becoming more aware of what occupies my thoughts (mostly worries), and I have been snapping out of these thoughts back to the present moment almost every time I catch myself thinking them. It's tricky, but I'm getting better.

I am setting my intent more firmly throughout the day to lucid dream,too. I'm going to start repeating to myself "I lucid dream every night" before I fall asleep, this week. I find that this mantra puts me into an excited, positive mood that should be very conducive to lucid dreaming. After all,enthusiasm is everything, or so I've heard.

I've been asking myself the following questions these last few days:

How did I get here?
What was I doing ten minutes ago?
Why am I here?
Where will I be in fifteen minutes?

I've also started trying to 'predict' what relatives or friends will do when they enter the same room as me. If they act exactly as I imagined they would, then I'll know I am dreaming, as I've recently noticed objects appear in my dreams if I suddenly think about them, or people will say certain phrases if I imagine they will.

I'm trying to get my default state of mind into believing that I'm already in a dream 24/7, and that whenever I do a RC or ask myself a question,it's in the hopes that I'm trying to see if I AM awake or not.

A lot of getting good at lucid dreaming is related to finding your own path. I like the way that you are doing at least one thing that is not common practice with that predictive approach. It sounds promising! Good luck and let me know if you have any questions.

Last night I dreamt I threw a ceramic mug at a wall, shielding my eyes and turning away from the wall as I did so. I felt glass shards thud into the back of my neck and my back, and although I couldn't visually identify the shards as being made of glass, I knew they were. I thought this sudden change of material to be quite strange. I also felt it strange that I didn't feel any pain.

Is this a sign I'm becoming better at questioning my surroundings in-dream?

Originally Posted by Quilly

Last night I dreamt I threw a ceramic mug at a wall, shielding my eyes and turning away from the wall as I did so. I felt glass shards thud into the back of my neck and my back, and although I couldn't visually identify the shards as being made of glass, I knew they were. I thought this sudden change of material to be quite strange. I also felt it strange that I didn't feel any pain.

Is this a sign I'm becoming better at questioning my surroundings in-dream?

It sounds like it. Continue with your day practices, WBTB and enthusiasm and you should be successful soon!

Wow, vividness is back. Had four very vivid dreams last night after a few days of only one dream per night that was quite drab.

I'm taking extra care to smell my food before I eat it, and to snap out of thoughts that derail me from the present moment. Even as I sit here typing, I'm trying really hard to notice subtle things like the impact of my fingers on the keys and the sounds of the mouse clicking.

I love vivid dreams, nice! Don't forget to include self awareness practice, a la Sageous and the RRC (my first post in your workbook) as I feel it can really help you to become lucid. It is a little different from mindfulness, which has it's own set of benefits.

Whoaaa! Alright, I think I'm getting somewhere,now!

My dream last night was as follows:

I'm at my father's house, fighting some demon or something. The demon manages to kill me before it escapes outside into the backyard. I'm now a ghost. I go outside after the demon, but can't see it anywhere. I see a floating meter that tells me to wave my arms and jump around so that I can resurrect myself. I try this for a bit, then get tired and sit down. I then get up, still a ghost, and then start jumping into the air and floating and flying around! In my gut, I know I'm dreaming. I knew it, and I was aware I was! But for some reason, a part of me was scared that if I acknowledged this out loud, the dream would destabilize and I would wake up with the pins and needles feeling I got the first time I tried to lucid dream (see first post). So I said to myself "I will tell myself that I am lucid dreaming, but I will fly to the ground very quickly and lie very still with my eyes closed so that my dream stabilizes." As soon as I said "I am dreaming" to myself, I fell to the ground and my dream destabilized, and I woke up for a fraction of a second. I continued to lie still and essentially DEILDed into a non lucid.

What an experience! The moment of calm and clarity as I was floating around, knowing in my gut that I was dreaming! But why did I destabilize as soon as I said the words, even though I tried to stabilize? How can I solve this so that I can lucid dream for longer next time?

Thank you all for getting me this far. It was worth it if not only for that fleeting experience, but I'm going to continue to push on.

But why did I destabilize as soon as I said the words, even though I tried to stabilize? How can I solve this so that I can lucid dream for longer next time?

Thank you all for getting me this far. It was worth it if not only for that fleeting experience, but I'm going to continue to push on.

I don't think it had anything to do with saying those words unless somewhere in the back of your mind you were expecting that to be the result. I feel like good advice for a beginner (I got the same advice) is to not worry able stabilizing and just go do what you want to do in the lucid dream. You can work on stabilization later. The two main reasons most beginners find challenges with stability has to do with getting over excited and worrying about stabilizing. It sounded like you were worried about stabilizing the dream, so that is what I would focus on working on next (along with your practices to continue to get lucid dreams). You can even practice during the day perhaps when you do RCs or ADA: practice feeling calm and confident and just visualizing about what you will do in your next lucid dream.

Congrats on you lucid dream! If you like the advice here or anywhere on the forums, don't forget to hit the like button at the bottom.

Originally Posted by Memm

I think it's really important to remember, and I forget this very often as well, that awareness by itself won't make you lucid.

If you look at the alternative translations to mindfulness

Mindfulness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You'll see:

• Mindful attention
• Reflective awareness
• Recollecting mindfulness
• Inspection

For LDing what you want is a state of critical awareness.

Often when we are faced with some sort of problem, we get too caught up in the problem to take a step back and ask "is this actually how it's supposed to be?", it's not just dreams that this happens in.

In real life you turn on the light in your room and you can be fully aware of this, in the dream you turn on a light and you can be fully aware of it. In both reality and in the dream you are aware and you remember turning on the light later in the day and you remember that you turned on a light when you wake up after the dream.

Pure awareness will give you great dream recollection, but not lucidity!

What you want is to note whether the light turned on the way it usually does, this means it's a two stage process.

1. You notice the feeling of turning the light on, the change from dark to light (awareness)
2. You then use your memory and decide if the light did what you expected it to do, did it turn on like it does all the other times you've done it? (reflection)

Only doing step one will only give you good dream recall, not lucidity.


Here's an example from an actual dream:

Last night I was dreaming that I was fixing a weirdly complicated mechanism, I was really busy trying to fix it and was wondering why I couldn't seem to get it right. Instead of wondering if it was actually a real object I was fixing, I was fully aware of what I was doing but only in order to help me work out the problem.

We actually do this in reality all the time, when something doesn't seem to go our way we butt heads with the problem, using all our wits to try and solve it, we don't generally step back and see if the problem is a real problem until much later.

So we need to not just be aware of something but also reflect on it.

By the way don't go into lengthy thoughts like "oh yeah this light switch totally seems to be working so I'm not dreaming let's try it again a few times just to make sure and then follow it up with holding my nose and trying to breath through it and let's see what else doesn't seem realistic" this will get tiresome really soon and there's no way you'll keep it up all day. Mindfulness isn't thinking it's more of a gentle nod.

I quite like this post by Memm.

So, plodding along with all my mindfulness during the day. No hint of another lucid dream yet, but I suppose slow progress is still progress. Reflecting on things like taps and light switches and doors to see if they work the way they always do.
Dream recall has been good. I can remember at least two dreams a night in great detail.

I find if I go to bed later than usual (midnight,for example), I don't wake up naturally during the night. If I go to bed at my usual 9 or 10pm, I wake up at around 2 or 3am.

I'm wondering if I'm doing all that I can to give me more lucid dreams. At least three times a day I'll really stop and try to goad myself into believing I'm dreaming, and then I'll test objects like the lights in my room, or I'll see if objects cast shadows on the floor, or I'll look to see if I can see my eyelids as I blink, or I'll ask myself where I was 10 minutes ago...

Does all this sound like enough? Do I just need to keep at it?

It is likely enough to keep getting some lucid dreams here and there and sure, and slow progress is just fine. That being said, you may want to add something that includes working on memory (like the RRC and/or prospective memory) to help along the progress. Memm also mentioned memory in that quote that you provided: "2.You then use your memory and decide if the light did what you expected it to do, did it turn on like it does all the other times you've done it?" In his example, memory aids in the reflection, so you need to ramp up the waking memory that is often missing while dreaming. The RRC and prospective memory addresses this in different ways.

I've looked at Sageous' tutorial, but I'm really struggling with the concept of RCCs. I feel like I'm just repeating rote phrases like "Oh,how is stuff impacting on me" without feeling any of the 'wonder' he talks about.

Originally Posted by Quilly

I've looked at Sageous' tutorial, but I'm really struggling with the concept of RCCs. I feel like I'm just repeating rote phrases like "Oh,how is stuff impacting on me" without feeling any of the 'wonder' he talks about.

I remember struggling with it for quite a while and one of the things that helped me turn a corner was being able to see myself from various perspectives and this thread recommended by Sageous really helped: http://www.dreamviews.com/beyond-dre...rspective.html

See if it strikes a chord with you. I really loved a lot of the examples that came up in the thread.

RRCs have been getting somewhat easier to perform. I've been trying out that Clear Light Perspective idea.
I think I almost WILDed the other night without intending to. I was attempting to MILD, and I was lying there doing mantras and visualizations, and I visualized myself becoming lucid after finding something strange in my visualization, and for a brief second, I think I DID become lucid, but then got felt very tingly all over and woke up. Huh,weird.

Recall is on the improve all the time. My dream signs don't seem to make me become lucid, even though I'm constantly telling myself "If I see _____,then I'm dreaming". Often it's my dad or his house that recur in my dreams.

Been practicing Dream Yoga, and it's been helping my self awareness in subtle ways e.g. being attuned to the various background noises that the brain tends to block out.

It sounds like you are progressing well on several fronts. I am glad you checked out the clear light perspective. It is also a good way to practice visualization in general. Let me know if you have any questions.

Hmmm...Last night was a weird dream. I was explaining lucid dreaming to a friend, and yet I didn't become lucid myself. I wonder why not.

Originally Posted by Quilly

Hmmm...Last night was a weird dream. I was explaining lucid dreaming to a friend, and yet I didn't become lucid myself. I wonder why not.

That is not uncommon and is a good sign that you have lucid dreaming on your mind. That will lead to lucid dreams, so look at the bright side.