Thread: ExothermReacton's workbook

I can't believe how closely I failed to get lucid last night. All the time I noticed weird things and questioned them. I found a secret room and when I tried to reenter it the entry was so small that I had to push myself through it. I bought ice in a coffee bar and noticed how disappointingly small 5 portions of ice were, to the point where you could surely call it a rip-off. The store looked strange to me anyway.

I knew all the time that those things are definitely not normal but the connection to "It is a dream" failed for some reason. Can you recommend a way to especially train this connection except for the usual RCs when noticing something strange in waking life?

You train it by keeping it on your mind. Continually remind yourself that "odd/strange/unexpected/confusing = DREAM!" Make a point of saying "whoa, that's weird, I'M DREAMING" and doing a solid good RC. This is a combination of reflection and memory: you're reflecting on your experiences, and remembering that you're doing this to reach your goal to be lucid in the dream state. And of course attention/awareness in the first place, to notice these things.

Originally Posted by ExothermReacton

Had one of my better lucids tonight. The "What did I do before?" question is so powerful when it works. I was walking around in a city and I was wondering after a while how I did get there so fast although I was in my bed a few minutes ago. That was enough to realize I was dreaming as there was no way I could be here right now. After making my test jump I even remembered a dream goal: The super speed task from the competition. Now the "I control everything anyway, just in an unconcious way" concept was super helpful. Subconciously I control myself to have a certain maximum running speed. So I just linked my concious will to it and accelerated myself by telekinesis basically. I was running but my feet didn't do the most acceleration it was the mental power I applied on myself.

Awesome! Congratulations! I love that way of becoming lucid and great work using your mind for speed! I use that as well.

Originally Posted by ExothermReacton

I can't believe how closely I failed to get lucid last night. All the time I noticed weird things and questioned them.

To look on the bright side, these were all signs that you were close! Think of those dreams where you were completely zoned out not paying attention to the weird and strange and count this as a step in the right direction.

Tried what you proposed over the day, FryingMan. I have to say there were a few situations when the linking directly worked. I saw something strange and "Dream" popped into my mind. I am going to practice it so it happens more often.

You are so right, fogelbise! In some dreams I weren't even really aware of my own existence. All I saw was a series of events that I didn't even take part in. More like a movie than a dream. In comparism to that I was really good last night.

Hey, just wanted to leave a little note on my progress so far.

My biggest breakthrough was one night in that I had 3 lucids. What a ride! Although it got a bit unclear at times I could clearly think and remember my goals. I even mastered some abilities I was never able to do before.
On the other hand I was a bit angry here and there because of my "stupidity" basically. In the last week I had three dreams in which I thought "Wow, that is weird. This would be a typical dream situation!"
Well, sadly I didn't test it out afterwards and just kept thinking it was simply one of the weirder days in waking life. If I can work this out I could potentially have more than one lucid per week but it will take some time.
Another thing I noticed is how your emotional state influences your awareness. When I got really enraged or stressed I lost awareness for multiple hours because it made me feel like I was in a tunnel.
So I kept training maintaining my usual calm state and it feels so good to be aware of the awareness. hehe..

Oh, and individual dreams seem to connect more and more and build up a small lore of my dream world. It starts to feel like an actual place more than a series of random events. Another big motivation for me actually.

Originally Posted by ExothermReacton

My biggest breakthrough was one night in that I had 3 lucids. What a ride! Although it got a bit unclear at times I could clearly think and remember my goals. I even mastered some abilities I was never able to do before.

Awesome!! Congratulations on becoming lucid and mastering some new abilities! Getting 3 lucids in one night is a very nice achievement!

On the other hand I was a bit angry here and there because of my "stupidity" basically. In the last week I had three dreams in which I thought "Wow, that is weird. This would be a typical dream situation!"
Well, sadly I didn't test it out afterwards and just kept thinking it was simply one of the weirder days in waking life. If I can work this out I could potentially have more than one lucid per week but it will take some time.

At least you were close again! What you want to do is make sure you always do RC's (more than one) every time you notice the weird. You want to make the RC as sincere is possible. Have you had any DILD's where you were truly astonished in the dream that you were actually dreaming? Anytime that you feel that you are *not* doing sincere RC's, simply relive that dream vividly in your mind. It should produce a line of thinking like "Aha! I really should always take my RC's seriously, I was astonished in that dream, why can't this be a dream RIGHT NOW?!?!" You could also use a non lucid dream where you woke up from it and it felt so real!..it truly felt like you just came from another realm! Those types of experiences really remind us to put real thought, and a little bit more time, into all of our RC's. If you can do this, trust me, you will find very few situations where you ignore dreamy thoughts in a dream.

Another thing I noticed is how your emotional state influences your awareness. When I got really enraged or stressed I lost awareness for multiple hours because it made me feel like I was in a tunnel.
So I kept training maintaining my usual calm state and it feels so good to be aware of the awareness. hehe..

Great point! That is the first step to catching those emotions before they cause you to lose awareness.

Oh, and individual dreams seem to connect more and more and build up a small lore of my dream world. It starts to feel like an actual place more than a series of random events. Another big motivation for me actually.

This is awesome! I have very few connections between my non lucid dreams besides common waking life connections, so I am jealous!

Just another update.

I was finally able to have a lucid dream in that I used all the things I learned. I got instantly lucid after seeing a flying toilet (yeah, it was just hovering in the middle of the room, don't ask). For the first time I made use of stabilizing my dream. I changed the classical "rubbing-your-hands"-tactic a bit and also used clapping to have more acustic feedback. It works excellently in closed rooms when it echoes. When I was sure of what I wanted to actually do I took some time to think about my position and how I was already in full control. I created this dream, although unconciously, so I should be able to influence it as I wish, right?
For some reason I felt like summoning fire. I threw some flaming balls at a tree and it was burning down rapidly. What a beautiful sight! When it was nothing but a piece of coal I celebrated my victory and some people applauded to me.

Definitely my best lucid so far. There is just one problem. I have no idea why it worked so well that night. Sometimes it seems as there is no real reason behind it. My top priority goal is to higher my LD frequency so that will be an interesting quesiton to investigate.

Congratulations!

When you are not sure why it worked so well: that is where great notes come in handy, basically keeping track of all the things you are doing that day and in the days and weeks leading up to it. It could help you find some keys to your answer. Your workbook is a great place to do this...or in your personal dream journal if you wish.

Good idea! I might find a clue after a few more lucids. There have to be at least some similarities.

I read about a few practices recently that I am going to try out in the following days. They basically focus on improving awareness for your surroundings and self-awareness.

The first step is to simply conentrate on one object and percept every detail of it. Form, colors, shadows, lighting and whatever else there might be. Then you try to imagine impossible or absurd things that happen to the obejcts around while you have your eyes open. You basically try to actually see those absurd things with your physical eyes. Although you know that you created those scenarios, your subconcious will automatically question the reality because the experience goes against your usual experineces and knowledge. Probably the reason why you are supposed to keep your eyes open. It should feel like it is actually hapenning.

Step three is a bit of self awareness training which you do when meditating or going to bed. Just analyse yourself as good as possible. How do you physically feel? What emotions run through you and why? How would you describe those feelings to a being who is not able to feel them themselves? Look at who you are.

Step four is something most lucid dreamers do anyway at some point. Imagine a dream situation as real as possible and get many senses involved. The experience is not the same as a dream of course but fairly close. As you are aware you can take your time to take a detailed look around you and find out how you might recognize dreams. It is a great tool for WILD techniques, too but I am not really into those.

All in all this sounds pretty reasonable to me. It gives me concrete practices rather than just the general "Be aware all day" idea which I will try to keep up as well of course.

It is probably too early to tell if the new techniques work or not but my night has been very different from the usual ones.
For example, my dream memory worked differently than usual. In a normal night I shortly awake and become concious. I collect the dream and give it a tag so I don't forget it. This time though I slept through without a concious moment and still remembered a total of four dreams. That is very positive to me as it means more sleep and the dream also feel more like on long journey rather than a weird collection of seperate pieces.

And I got lucid at some point. Sadly, it was the first dream I had so the memory is not as detailed as I wish it would be. Even that state felt so different. Kind of more natural and the dream signs felt extremely obvious to me. Normally, I am at least a bit surprised about my dream state but this time I was 100% calm. Still, it wasn't a perfect lucid as I didn't remember what I wanted to do and just messed around in the world.

I am going to test the technique further. One success could be totally unrelated to it so I need a few more nights to make up my mind.

Those different steps for awareness sound interesting. I like mixing in different takes on practices. Even if some practices are only slightly different, it keeps your practices fresh. Where did you read that? I didn't see a "step 2" listed in your post.

Congratulations on your LD!

I would love to hear how continued use of the technique goes for you. I wouldn't be surprised if it helped in some way since you seemed to experienced things differently than in previous times.

It is definitely staying interesting so far. I had two unstable lucids this night and a totally new experience. I had a fairly crazy dream about partying all night and going from one location to another. In the next dream I had a false awakening and awoke on the ground next to my bed. For some reason I perfectly remembered the dream before and just thought "Well, lying on the ground explains why I had such a weird dream.". I really wonder how my memory transfered from one dream to another. Normally they are totally independent from each other memory-wise. It made the whole situation even more realistic. Luckily, the rest was pretty absurd as always. There were unknown people sleeping in my bed which I did not question at first but when I went down to the bath I became lucid fairly fast after thinking all this through. Sadly, I couldn't do anything as the dream broke down in a matter of seconds with no warning. I was to fast with doing stuff obviously.

Oh, step two from the technique was the "imagine the impossible" part by the way.

I found the instructions on this site: google "world of lucid dreaming how to improve your self awareness"

Congratulations on the two LD's!

The way your dreams tied together is a great sign I feel. Keep up the good work and please keep us up to date.

Originally Posted by fogelbise

Congratulations on the two LD's!

The way your dreams tied together is a great sign I feel. Keep up the good work and please keep us up to date.

Of course I will. Sorry for the link, I should have remembered that advertising other websites is not allowed. Well, learning by mistakes I guess.

^No worries at all. I even asked for where you found it, so that's on me. I really like the exercises, so thank you for sharing!

When I went through #3 and all of the details and suggestions on the website for #3, I found the exercise reaching further inwards - further towards meditation than I usually do, which was quite helpful. I like the details she thought of for each of the exercises.

That is definitely worth a bookmark to revisit the exercises. I am betting that you get more from it when you perform the exercises on consecutive days. I am also thinking that you would likely notice substantially different experiences by revisiting the exercises months later since you will likely have learned new things about those 5 exercises and new things about other related practices that give you different insight into the exercises. Basically I am suggesting to keep up the exercises for a while and, if you do take a breather from the exercises, definitely revisit them in the future. I plan to do the same. As I said, I like refreshing my approach from time to time - as long as it fits with what I have found works and this does seem to fit.

Hey, I wanted to check back in after some time because I felt like writing about my recent dream experiences. For some reason I am very fascinated by analysing my dream signs on a deeper level right now. Some time ago a dream character gave me an interesting hint in a semi-lucid dream: "Don't you think that everything seems simplified here, stereotypical, just kinda flat?"

Thinking about that quote I came to the conclusion that there is a lot of truth behind that statement. Of course the brain has to simplify a lot of things because the waking world is way too complex to recreate it 100%. Instead the brain works very efficiently and only does barely enough to give us the full experience of what we usually see every day (or some crazy stuff, the experience just needs to feel "complete" to us). Some very typical and some personal dream signs of mine can be explained by simplifying.

Broken/weird constructions, machines, buildings etc.: If we take a light switch for example, the brain just puts it on the wall once it enters our perception but never put a single thought into what use that switch that has and how exactly everything behind the wall works. For that reason light switches often don't work in dreams. The brain kept it simple and didn't generate an output for the input of "press switch". Buildings are fairly similar. The brain doesn't have time to think about every aspect of why a building should be built in a certain way. It just puts together and changes up known patterns. The result might be a very unfortunate building with some weird elements that seem out of place.

Empty spaces/many peope I know in one place: When populating huge places the easiest option for the brain would be to either leave it empty or populate it quickly with the persons it is most familiar with. Of course huge crowds of unknown people appear to but for me it is usually one of the cases mentioned before. The simplified aspect here is that those people are there for no good reason. How high is the chance that I meet twenty friends by pure chance?
It would be way too complicated to think up a routine for each characte that leads him to that place. The brain doesn't care if it is logical if all those people appear in the same place.

Based on all that I started a reality check routine. In the morning and in the evening when walking to/returning from university I observe buildings, cars, traffic lights and many other objects and ask myself "What purpose does it have and does it look like it could fulfill that purpose?" More than once I really questioned if the way something was constructed actually made sense. Sometimes I didn't understand it even when thinking for some time about it.
I do the same with people I know from time to time. "Why are they here? Is it even possible for them to be in this place?"

Those questions make me question my environment way more than "normal" reality checks actually.

It's great to see you again! That sounds like an interesting and helpful hint from the DC indeed! I like how you've used it to retool your RCs. I seem to have to play with changing my RCs around as well to keep them effective. In case you find that RC becomes rote, I recently created a thread where I talk about different ones I've used in the different posts of the thread if you want to check it out: https://www.dreamviews.com/attaining...-activity.html

Originally Posted by ExothermReacton

Hey, I wanted to check back in after some time because I felt like writing about my recent dream experiences. For some reason I am very fascinated by analysing my dream signs on a deeper level right now. Some time ago a dream character gave me an interesting hint in a semi-lucid dream: "Don't you think that everything seems simplified here, stereotypical, just kinda flat?"

Thinking about that quote I came to the conclusion that there is a lot of truth behind that statement. Of course the brain has to simplify a lot of things because the waking world is way too complex to recreate it 100%. Instead the brain works very efficiently and only does barely enough to give us the full experience of what we usually see every day (or some crazy stuff, the experience just needs to feel "complete" to us). Some very typical and some personal dream signs of mine can be explained by simplifying.

Broken/weird constructions, machines, buildings etc.: If we take a light switch for example, the brain just puts it on the wall once it enters our perception but never put a single thought into what use that switch that has and how exactly everything behind the wall works. For that reason light switches often don't work in dreams. The brain kept it simple and didn't generate an output for the input of "press switch". Buildings are fairly similar. The brain doesn't have time to think about every aspect of why a building should be built in a certain way. It just puts together and changes up known patterns. The result might be a very unfortunate building with some weird elements that seem out of place.

Empty spaces/many peope I know in one place: When populating huge places the easiest option for the brain would be to either leave it empty or populate it quickly with the persons it is most familiar with. Of course huge crowds of unknown people appear to but for me it is usually one of the cases mentioned before. The simplified aspect here is that those people are there for no good reason. How high is the chance that I meet twenty friends by pure chance?
It would be way too complicated to think up a routine for each characte that leads him to that place. The brain doesn't care if it is logical if all those people appear in the same place.

Based on all that I started a reality check routine. In the morning and in the evening when walking to/returning from university I observe buildings, cars, traffic lights and many other objects and ask myself "What purpose does it have and does it look like it could fulfill that purpose?" More than once I really questioned if the way something was constructed actually made sense. Sometimes I didn't understand it even when thinking for some time about it.
I do the same with people I know from time to time. "Why are they here? Is it even possible for them to be in this place?"

Those questions make me question my environment way more than "normal" reality checks actually.

You've made an important discovery, coming to the realization of what is really important is probably one of the most important factors in more successful lucid dreaming!

I really don't like the term "reality check." People come up with terms like "mental reality check," etc. IMO, the proper term to use is "state test." A state test is a simple, fast, method to answer the question: "right now, am I dreaming or awake?"

A state test cannot make you lucid. A state test cannot make you ask that question. The fundamentals of awareness, attention, reflection, memory, these are what lead to budding lucidity. A state test can help reinforce a spark of lucidity and fan it into a flame of full-on realization that you are in a dream.

The fundamentals are what lead to lucidity. State tests are a tool in the toolbox, but are not the point. Lucidity is the point, and lucidity comes from, well, practicing lucidity, day and night.

Mindfulness, or the practice of realizing the truth of the present moment, is the key, as you have discovered.

You won't do this in dreams unless you do this, regularly, in waking life.

This mindfulness/reflection, plus the strong intent to be lucid in dreams, leads to lucid dreams.

So it wasn't that you were previously doing "bad reality checks," you previously were missing the strong element of reflection that leads you to do state tests.

Thanks for the additional tips! Going to keep that in mind. The improved routine has shown some impact on my dreams. You could say that there is just more stuff happening and things get a little crazier. Sometimes I notice weird behaviour of my surroundings but the connection to the thought "Oh, it is a dream!" is a bit weak at the moment. Guess, I have to train that next.

Had a lucid dream last night and I could clearly see the effects of my awareness routine. I somehow saw things differently and thought differently about them when seeing them. In the dream a huge group of people wanted to party on the roof of a wooden cabin and another group wanted to stop them. They were so angry, that they even put out guns and threw one into my hand. When looking at the ridiculous mass of people on the roof and my own gun it just felt off without me being really aware of the fact that there was no good reason for the whole situation at all. It was more like a faint feeling. Then it became so obvious that I didn't even reality check. It had to be a dream!

Even the first lucid minutes were different. I spent a lot of time just touching objects and improving my awareness. Usually I would never get that idea.

Let's see where that leads.

Great job! Congratulations on the heightened awareness making it into your dream and becoming lucid! I look forward to see your progress.