Jarjar's workbook

Hello people of Dreamviews. I'm jarjar and this is probably my 10th attempt at lucid dreaming. I've been off and on the forums a lot and just can't seem to stick to it. I try for a few weeks at most and then quit for a few months, likely because I'm not very patient when it comes to lucid dreaming.

I've actually had 3 lucid dreams, all at a very low level of lucidity. Hopefully I'll stick to it this time and be able to lucid dream relatively often. I'll be posting here no less than one a week with what progress I've made. Well that's all for today, au revoir people of Dreamviews

Welcome back! I would encourage you to post your progress more often and perhaps you will feel a level of accountability to keep it going for this return. :) You just need one good breakthrough lucid with stronger lucidity and that will buy you a ton of motivation I feel. Do you have any questions?

And another welcome back! You're obviously very interested in dreaming, which is why you keep returning to it. Why not make a commitment to yourself to spend at least (some amount of time), say 2-3 months, without stopping, to see how far you can go? Longer periods of dedication will give better results -- in dreaming the effects of training tend to come with a delay, so as long as you keep at it, you'll enjoy the benefits!

Thanks for the welcome guys. I think I'll make it my goal to have at least 1 LD by next year. As for any questions, I know its different for everyone, but how long did it take you guys to have your first LD with a high level of lucidity?

Progress

I was able to remember 3 dreams from last night, all very detailed. I might add them to my DJ soon.

Yes, everyone is different. My first LD came one month to the day after I started LD practice (I was doing basically "pure LaBerge" (ETWOLD/ACILD) for that month). LD #1 was somewhat "wobbly" but of decent length: about one minute, not bad for a first LD. LD #2 came one week after #1, and I stabilized by rubbing my hands and had a several-minute, very clear look around an interesting indoor space, and was quite vivid. LD #7 was probably my first "wow, am I sure this is a dream?" level of vividness, and it came around 2 months after LD #1 (Thanksgiving morning as I recall). It was the first time I stopped to do an RC in the middle of an LD to re-convince myself I was dreaming, it was also my longest-yet at about 5 minutes. I began that one with a full-body pat-down using my dream hands (pounding on chest, abdomen, legs) and counting to five, a nice "engage in the dream" ritual to develop.

Helpful hint: It's very valuable to practice an "I just got lucid" ritual when awake: look around in wonder saying "I'm Dreaming!" then do some physical act like rub your hands for a few seconds, path down your body, etc., look around while slowly walking to explore your environment. It's best to keep your feet moving, a sense of movement helps to really focus your attention on the dream and away from your waking body.

Last night I woke up around 4:00 AM and was able to remember part of a dream. The night before, I couldn't remember anything. Also I've been trying all day awareness, so we'll see how that works out

So FryingMan, out of all 86 of your LDs the longest is 5 minuets? How do you get to do anything interesting in 5 minutes. It seems like all you would be able to do is realize your dreaming, walk around a bit, and that's it the dreams over.

No the longest *at that time* was 5 minutes. I've had some much longer since then.

However, very long lucid dreams are not all that common for me, that's true. But I take everything in in my lucids. Try taking *everything* in, every visual, word, thing you do, in waking life for 5 minutes and to remember it all when walking around, talking to people, interacting, etc. To me it doesn't feel all that short. Also, if I just "avoid the ladies" then my lucids go on *much* longer.

Anyway, I'm quite content with my lucids. Some people have lucids that last only seconds, not several minutes. I know that length and stability will come with time and in getting lucid earlier and earlier in the REM cycle. Sivason (the dream yoga teacher on this forum) mentioned that it takes around 100 LDs before they start occurring earlier and earlier in the REM cycle as opposed to occurring right before waking up.

p.s. walk, fly, kiss, love, fight, etc. there's a lot you can do in 5 minutes :)

Yeah, a 5 minute Ld would be a huge improvement for me.

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Originally Posted by jarjar

As for any questions, I know its different for everyone, but how long did it take you guys to have your first LD with a high level of lucidity?

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I had some LD's in childhood (before getting away from LD's and from even remembering most dreams for many years) and my first LD was very special. Many would argue how lucid could you have really been at that age. All I can say is that I knew that I was experiencing a dream...a nightmare once again and on that occasion I took action to fight the nightmare creature as my father suggested and it felt so empowering and probably had the side effect of having very few truly scary nightmares through the rest of my childhood and into adulthood and perhaps led to me paying less attention to dreams. I think my more relevant answer would be in regards to my adult practice and I need to find my old paper DJ entries but I did find one high level one that was 4 months into my practice. I think I had some truly high level ones before that and I can still remember my first one in adulthood from memory and it seemed to be pretty high level lucidity. It definitely got better with time though. In case our definition of what constitutes a "high level of lucidity" differs, I am talking about having a strong memory of current waking life and fully understanding that what you are experiencing is all a dream.

Yes, you can have a lot of fun in a 5 minute LD. Sure you always strive for longer and longer ones and you will have longer ones if you keep up your practice.

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Originally Posted by fogelbise

In case our definition of what constitutes a "high level of lucidity" differs, I am talking about having a strong memory of current waking life and fully understanding that what you are experiencing is all a dream

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Yeah, that's pretty much my definition of a high level of lucidity

I went to bed around 11:00 PM last night and woke back up around 4:00 AM. I couldn't remember any dreams. I fell back asleep, and when I woke back up at around 8:00 AM I was able to remember a dream I had. So far my dream seems to be pretty good with me being able to remember a minimum of 1 a night. Now I need to focus on keeping my awareness up.

I am happy to see that you are continuing to post on a regular basis. One reason I wanted FryingMan to help out here in the workbooks, besides his significant wealth of knowledge on the subject, is that he started more recently than I and seems to remember well what it was like starting out. Although you are not brand new to the subject, it can be a bit like starting again. FryingMan and I both like helping people discover what we love about lucid dreaming, so don't be shy to let us know how we can help.

Have you tried practicing during the day what you will do when you next become lucid?..the practice FryingMan mentioned a little while back? I use that practice and recommend it as well. Have you ever tried SSILD? It may not be for everyone. It seems to help me become lucid on some nights where I don't even have strong recall that night prior to using it.

Jarjar, that's great that your dream recall is becoming consistent! Keep it up, over time you'll remember more and more, even the middle of the night wakings will bring recall. As I like to say, it's OK to take a break from LD day work once in a while, and night work if you absolutely need to be rested, but I prefer to never take a break from recall -- even when sick, I always reach for recall when I find myself awake. I think this practice builds very strong recall, as your train your mind to equate waking up with recalling dreams.

Stay positive about dreaming and recall, and your abilities will grow over time.

Adding in daytime awareness work is a great thing. I like to recommend the LaBerge/Tholey reflection/intention approach. In summary, a few times during the day, just stop what you're doing and imagine that you're in a dream, take a long slow look around and imagine what things would be like (your dream signs) if this were a dream, and repeat your mantra, and set intention that the next time you're dreaming, you remember to recognize that you're dreaming. Visualize what you would like to do in your lucid dream.

This method helped me to achieve my goals of flying a lot in dreams, both lucidly and non-lucidly.

I'm back once again everybody. I was sick for the past week and have been going to bed really late so I haven't been remembering any dreams recently. But I'll definitely be getting back to my dream recall and awareness starting tonight.

Glad to hear that you are feeling better and are back to your practice. Let us know how we can help. :)

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