Thread: InnerVision's Workbook

Hello all,

I am not completely new here and anyone who frequently visits the 'attaining lucidity' forum might have come across my name. Still I'd like to give a brief introducting to provide some potentially useful context.

So, I am InnerVision. I'm male, 18 years old and live in The Netherlands. I'm currently graduating high school and plan to start studying psychobiology (3 year bachelor) next year. I've always had an interest in dreaming; ever since I was a child I have wondered how my mind would come up with the extraordinary settings of my dreams.

I think it is worth a mention that I suffered from multiple recurring nightmares as a child. The theme and plot of these dreams was always roughly the same: I'd be in a desolated place, like a forest or an abandoned playground far outside the city, it would turn dark and I would see one or more wolves coming toward me. No matter where I tried to hide or run, they would always catch up and at that moment I woke up. These dreams caused an irrational and intense fear of wolves in waking life (thinking that they were under my bed etc). This fear troubled my sleep for years, until I read a book about wolves (from their perspective), which completely turned around my view on them. From then on, wolves were my favourite animals and I've never had a nightmare about them anymore.

This story might not be completely relevant but it does explain part of my interest in dreams and influencing them.


Naturally, when I coincidentally came across an article on lucid dreaming 1.5 years ago I was really excited. Like a lot of beginners, I thought WILD would be the easiest way (and the quickest). Now I know that failure was to be expected; it really frustrated me and I gave up.
Still, the idea would not leave my mind and some time later I decided to give it another try. I found this forum and started reading up on different techniques, methods and whatsoever. It actually resulted in my first (very short and unstable) lucid dream. After that, not much happened and I lost interest.

This process has repeated itself quite a number of times now. I journal actively for a week or two, while doing reality checks and exercising prospective memory, and often this results in a short lucid dream. So far I have had 4 in total, all short and unstable.

Two weeks ago, I started another 'phase' as I call it sometimes. I had my fourth lucid dream, but somehow I just cannot keep up with journaling, keeping a structured sleeping pattern and reality checking during the day.

Finally I decided to create this workbook, to have some more social pressure (in a good way ) forcing me to commit.

The timing on this is not really great, since I'll be leaving on holiday the day after tomorrow. I won't be able to go to bed at a standard time, but I will have plenty of time to sleep in and do tons of WBTB's. I will probably consume some alcohol regularly but I hope to have some sober nights haha. I will post my progress using my cellphone so that won't be a problem to do on a daily basis. I do want to start now because procrastination has never gotten me anywhere.

Below is an overview of what I want to do (daily):

- Keep a decent dream journal. I normally jot down some keywords in a small notebook and then type it out later on the day, but that doesn't really work for me as I found out. I keep postponing the moment of writing it out to the point of not doing it for 3 days and then giving up and starting over. So, I will now start using my phone like I did some time ago, writing the full dream at the moment of waking. I will also post these entries here (with some names and stuff edited out of course) so you have an idea of my general dreams.

- Do prospective memory exercises daily. I will post how many 'targets' I have recognised everyday.

- Do reality checks every time I see a target from the prospective memory excercise.

- Do reality checks every time I feel strange, see something strange, have a moment of increased awareness or think about lucid dreaming.

- Be aware of my surroundings and the situation I am in as often as possible, tracing back my actions and critically observing my world.

- Wake Back To Bed every night using a soothing alarm, followed by some journaling, a 10-minute meditation and some mantra's.

My mantra generally consists of what I want to dream about (something I know that'll make me RC) or I just repeat 'I will be aware in my dreams'.

I hope that with the increased commitment (because of this workbook) I can make these things a habit (not automatic but something I don't need to force myself to do) instead of a chore.

I also hope that you can provide me with guidance wherever necessary but I'm sure that will be alright seeing the general involvement of this community

Apologies for the long read and thanks in advance,

InnerVision