ExothermReacton's workbook

Hey, I am ExothermReacton (Yes, the "i" is missing because the name is exactly one letter to long) and I decided to put up my workbook here.

I know about lucid dreaming for nearly two years now and I had quite a lot of experiences in that time. Sadly, I also had some really big pauses because I had too much stress to take. The good part is that I have a lot of free time now which makes it a lot easier to concentrate on lucid dreaming. My progress in the last 5 days went fairly well and my dreams got extremely vivid so that the plot in most dreams nearly makes sense. As I enjoyed them I started to write them down in a dream journal. I prefer writing full texts instead of notes but I leave some minor details out here and there. This day I also started to raise my awareness which is basically the most important thing for now.

In the past two years I tried all the techniques that somehow looked as they would fit me. The result was that DILD fits me clearly best because I have difficulties with getting back to sleep after I wake up in the middle of the night which makes WILD/DEILD pretty hard. Still I had some WILD experiences, for some reason always when I did NOT expect them. I didn't even really try and suddenly I experience the typical sleep paralysis and other "symptoms". I remembered my goals the best then but it wasn't really reliable. DILD instead has proven to be very reliable. Once I was able to have a lucid dream every two days for one week. They weren't all super vivid or long but pretty stable.

For this reason I am going to stay with DILD and try to master this technique. If there are more questions that you want to know just tell me here. Thanks!:)

And now let's get this workbook started!

The dreams in this night were filled with a lot of detail and I can recall a lot of it. Maybe my subconscious tricked me with a few cuts but they also felt fairly long.
But most importantly I start to show signs of awareness and active thinking like I would never do in a normal dream. Sometimes I stumble upon weird things and problems
I need to solve. I am confused first about how that happened at all. For example there was blood on my pants without any good reason. Secondly I can come up with
pretty logic solutions for them.
Additionally, I think about how I should react towards persons in my dreams acitvely instead of just doing the most obvious thing like I normally do.
If I train my awareness a bit more I should be able to break the wall and use my mind to question the whole situation and not just smaller weird events in it.

One dream was a bit different as I wasn't in the dream myself but could spectate the weird world I was in. Everything was grayish, the sky, the people and people started fights pretty often.
Sometimes you could hear shots being fired in the distance. The most interesting part was the 100% fitting "soundtrack" I could hear while spectating the mess. I never heard that music before
and it was wonderful but also pretty dramatic and sad.

Sadly, I fell asleep a bit too fast this night so that I couldn't fill my head with suggestions. Maybe this would have helped me to gain lucidity.

So this is my progress for today. Time to write this down in my journal!

Welcome to the DILD class, ExothermReacton! DILD is how I get basically all of my LDs, so I'm a big fan of it. I try DEILD/WILD on occasion but I just haven't gotten them solidly figured out yet. All the different approaches take a lot of practice and experimentation, so while focusing on DILD is fine, you can learn a lot by trying the occasional WILD as well. Very experienced LD practitioners use whatever approach is best suited for the circumstances they find themselves in.

You mention a difficulty getting back to sleep in the middle of the night. This is pretty common and I used to suffer from this a lot as well. The important thing is to really learn how to relax. Spend time researching and trying out various approaches. It is a very very useful thing in LD practice to be able to fall back asleep in a reasonable amount of time. I used to find myself up half the night sometimes (bedtime I always fall asleep quickly, but after 4-5 hours of sleep if I got too aroused I couldn't get back to sleep for hours sometimes) and that's really frustrating.

Here's a hint about SSILD (I'm not a huge fan but sometimes it helps me stop following stray thoughts) and MILD: do them with a very relaxed mind. In fact if you read anything about MILD or WILD you'll see it always starts with a period of relaxation: do not skip this! It's really important to make sure you're properly heading towards sleep. Without sleep there are no dreams!

As a means of incentive, I'll note that almost all of my best LDs either come right before waking (usually the last waking of the day), or after having been awake for a while and having gone back to sleep. Sometimes the longer I took getting back to sleep the higher the chances to have a LD if the conditions were right (via DILD).

Welcome again, and feel free to use your workbook to track your progress, set goals, keep yourself accountable, and of course ask any questions you can think of! Have great dreams!

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Originally Posted by ExothermReacton

If there are more questions that you want to know just tell me here. Thanks!:)

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Yes, welcome! Do you remember your set of day and night practices when you had that week with LD's every two days? Getting back to that may be a key for you. I rely on WBTB, but if you can get consistent results without WBTB and you have trouble getting back to sleep, then I would recommend perhaps just focusing on remembering what you were doing during that hot week and then you can build from there.

First off: Thanks for the welcome and all the tips. I am going to experimentate with them for sure!

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Originally Posted by fogelbise

Yes, welcome! Do you remember your set of day and night practices when you had that week with LD's every two days? Getting back to that may be a key for you. I rely on WBTB, but if you can get consistent results without WBTB and you have trouble getting back to sleep, then I would recommend perhaps just focusing on remembering what you were doing during that hot week and then you can build from there.

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Over the day I did pretty much the same thing I do now but my night practices were a bit different.
I always wrote in my journal before I went to sleep again and I also made some kind of WBTB. The important thing was that I didn't set any alarm but let my body wake up whenever it thought it was suitable (usually something around 3 to 4am).
But as I get easily too awake to sleep again I barely did anything rather than just fall to sleep again. Maybe this was enough already.

Good thing you reminded me. I will also try to train my relaxation as you said, FryingMan. As I have some free time it isn't too bad if I miss out some sleep here and there.

Whenever I need help I will tell you. Of course I am always happy about some advices and tips.:D

Made the mistake to relax a bit too much before actually starting with suggestions and such.

As a result I missed out the WBTB but the dream recall was very good and detailed still. At some points I was close to become lucid.
I wondered for example why everything felt so lite for me although it was made out of pure steel and I stumbled across some things
that made no sense for me. Now I just need to connect that with the fact that these things happen because it is a dream.

I did a WBTB tonight by just letting my body wake up when it wanted to. This is usually after the first dream in a night (the first I can remember at least).
I tried to chain my dreams but I already moved too much to drift off that fast again. Anyway I fell to sleep again and had some kind of semi-lucid dream.
I knew about the powers I had and was able to control them more or less but I was way too fast with doing stuff instead of getting fully lucid and think
of what I actually wanted to do. (Well bragging with your powers in front of your friends on a cold alien planet with red trees is nice too, isn't it?

Still a big milestone for me.:D

Congrats, well done, keep it up!

The WBTB worked well the night before so I gave it another try.
I managed to get lucid two times this night but the lucidity was not really high and I had problems with doing overnatural stuff.
There is one main reason for this: Everything felt so real for me that I just couldn't believe it is a dream. That caused two other
problems. First I am scared to hurt or kill myself by trying to fly from my roof for example. Second I don't want to anger the persons
around me by doing something stupid. I counted my fingers so often and everytime it were 7+.

Maybe I was also a bit confused because it seemed pretty obvious to me that I dreamed in these to dreams. It was like "No, it would be harder to find that out".
Which is non-sense actually as everyone could tell what was wrong with their dreams after they woke up. The hard thing is not to see what is wrong but to see
THAT something is wrong.

Overall I will try to get used to the environment first next time so I am not scared to do something wrong again.

Got a bit too late to bed this night which caused less dream recall. Wasn't able to induce a lucid dream tonight either.
I guess there is a certain border when my awareness is influenced negatively so I will try to sleep a bit earlier again.

Going to be early vs. late has a really large influence on my dream recall and lucidity. I've read that going to be late frequently, and varying your to-bed and wake-up times frequently means you're more or less in a permanent state akin to being jet lagged all the time.

Had no time to write my entry yesterday so I am doing it now.
Dreams were very detailed and vivid as always. I nearly induced a lucid one but I somehow convinced myself that it can't be a dream as everything feels too real.
I should have checked that actually.

Now the first week of my workbook is complete and I am very happy with the progress so far.
I didn't have dreams with so much detail and such nice stories for ages and I had my first lucid moments after a while.
Thanks to the coaches for helping me out with some very good tips and tricks!

Sign up for the August, 2015 competition that Sensei's running, it's always a lot of fun! Link's in my sig and DILD class announcements thread.

Signed up!
I looked a bit closer into typical signs for my dreams which occur pretty often.
- My endurance is unlimited and my muscles never get tired no matter what I am doing
- I am nearly always in unknown cities, buildings or whatever places but still have the feeling that I know where I am going
- Some types of daylight and weather are more common than others. Sunny days with a blue sky and green foliage and deeps nights are the most common
- I can tell how people will react towards me
- I know things that I can impossibly know about the situation I am in or about other people

I think this will help a lot as I can especially check for that over the day now.

It's good to frequently review dream signs. Daytime MILD is also very useful, where you review the scenes of the previous nights (or other) dreams, see yourself recognizing the signs and getting lucid and doing fun things.

Great that you've signed up for the comp, it's a fun time!

I am just not sure if I should go up into the middle league as I had quite a few LDs in my lifetime and I also
completed a few TOTMs here and there I think. Probably getting wrecked in the middle league but I will have a fun time anyway.

It's all in good fun. I personally think the lower league should really be for those just starting their journey or who don't get regular LDs.

Everything changes in the competitions -- I went from about one LD every week to 6-7 in the span of two weeks of the competition. Same for the 2nd one I participated in. It's great fun, and wonderful motivation.

I have been getting myself used a bit more to WBTB in the last two days.
So far I had no problem with missing out too much sleep and there are clearly some positive aspects.
For instance the dream recall is excellent. I wake up after the first dream in a night and then again after each deam for about 5-10 minutes.
That could make up to five dreams I remember in one night but I usually forget one or two because taking notes would wake me up too much.
The next step will be combining this with SSILD and other things to get myself aware in the next dreams which is very similar to what I did in
my best days of lucid dreaming.

It's great that you're noticing your wakings and remembering more dreams! Maybe you could try a voice recorder app for taking notes: you don't need light on, you can do it with your eyes closed and remaining almost completely still.

Had a little lucid moment this night. I was in the phase between dreaming and waking up when you still see your dream environment but can already feel the reality again.
My awareness was strenghtend by it but it was nearly impossible to keep my dream stable like this. Still every time I get lucid I learn and get a feeling for what could be a dream.

Great! Celebrate those little moments, and yes as you accumulate more of them you'll become more and more familiar with the feeling.

Nothing special in the last night but I am going to write something anyway.
I had a good chance to get a lucid dream but missed it very closely. I was driving and a road sign I had never seen before came into my way. That was strange enough but the other people in my car (total strangers that I believed to know) even told me that I reacted wrong on it. Strangely, the cars in front of me did the perfectly same thing.
I noticed all that but kept to try to find a good explanation for it other than that it is a dream.

I think I found the last piece that I missed now to fasten things up a bit. When I had these super frequent LDs I tried to do something similar to "All Day Awareness". Instead of questioning single suspicious events you try to be generally aware over the whole day. Of course I can't keep it up 100% of the day. Can't imagine how stressful that would be. It helped a lot though and is a very comfortable technique to train awareness actually.

Let's test this out before the competition begins and see how well it works.

Finally had a lucid again!
I decided to not do a WBTB this night and just normally sleep with the intention to take a very close look to what is happening in my dreams and it worked.
To be honest the WBTB messed up my sleep too much and even my dream recall got worse from it. Now I will try to practise my way of getting lucid further so that I am ready for the competition tomorrow.
See you there!

After the last competition I kinda forgot about this and thanks to the new one by Spellbee I finally remembered!

After having gone through some very work-intensive time I decided to restructure my way of lucid dreaming. So I read through this forum, found many interesting ideas and combined those, who complement each other well.
I started meditation for the first time in my life and it really helps with avoiding stress and getting rid of all the distracting thoughts you have over the day. Secondly, I correct myself every evening for the mistakes I made in my dreams, where I missed getting lucid and think of how I could have easily discovered that it is all a dream.
Over the day I reflect my world a lot and wonder how I got into this situation, if things behave like I would expect. To avoid stressing myself out I listened to some motivational hypnosis in that I set up a clock in my subconcious reminding me in a friendly way instead of annoying me.

My dreams gained depth by this and I already start to actually think in dreams, having more complex thoughts which sometimes lead to some questions about how it all happened. Definitely staying with this for a while!

Welcome back! You have a great set of practices going there, incorporating (IMO) the big three aspects of LD practice: attention, reflection, and recall. Keep it up, and your dreams and lucidity will grow and grow!

Seems like I am making another entry here after more than 10 months have passed. In that time I had ups and downs with lucid dreaming. Sometimes I couldn't attain lucidity at all and at other times it nearly felt natural to simply do so.
What is really interesting is that some basic skills never get completely lost. When I started lucid dreaming I wondered how people could remember so many detailed dreams and now I remember dreams without putting effort into it although I haven't tried to lucid dream for a while.

This is one of the most encouraging things I noticed. No matter how often I interrupt my lucid training. Some skills just stay with me all the time, becoming something I don't have to practice so forcefully like I used to do. Looking at some other well-known lucid dreamers on these forums indicates something similar. People asked them "How much time do you put in lucid dreaming practice per day?" and they are like "About 10 minutes at max". Still they have succes.

Just some random thoughts of me. I will try to track my progress here a bit more!

Welcome back! Have you thought about what kinds of things you can do to stick with the practice, even if it is just 10 minutes a day? I hope to see you stick with it and posting here regularly. I really wish I had stuck with it when I was young!

This may sound a bit too easy but what has helped me at times is just to "soak in" some moments. By this I mean just experiencing the moment and feel the atmosphere, have a look at the forms, the lightnign etc. around. I do not overanalyse though as you are often taught when beginning with lucid dreaming. It may be great for short term succes. At free days I was nearly permanently aware and had a decent lucid after that. Sadly, it is useless in the long run as nobody can keep up this level of awareness for a long time.

My problem and the reason why I dropped lucid dreaming a few times was that I failed to find the small degree between awareness and staying relaxed. I guess, I could do more with lucid dreaming as I learned the first steps pretty quickly but the learning curve increased drastically because of this.

But I am positive that it is just a matter of staying with lucid dreaming for long enough. People say it takes 20 days to get acustomed to a new behaviour. So I plan to post here every day for a while, even if nothing of interest happens.:D

May I ask how you approach lucid dreaming? I know that everyone has to find his own way as we are very individual in that area but maybe I am just missing out a few basics or with big luck your approach works fairly well for me and I can adjust it to my favour. This is what I did all the time basically. Adjusting well-known techniques to make them fit me. It just takes a few weeks that I have to stick around.

Totally forgot to say that there are very few things that make me lucid with a near 100% chance. For example meeting a person who is dead in reality makes me lucid all the time or if I can't remember things dream characters tell me although there is no way I could forget that (With other words it didn't happen at all and is purely made up). Well, those situations are rare but work even when I am not into practice.

Last night was not to special but I noticed something interesting. Vividness and recall don't seem to be connected as strongly as I thought. I remembered whole plots of the dreams but I only associated one or two images with it. So, although my senses werer very fuzzy my memory worked fairly well.

Had a significant boost in vividness last night. The dreams felt surprisingly real so I take that as a sign that I am doing things right so far.

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Originally Posted by ExothermReacton

May I ask how you approach lucid dreaming? I know that everyone has to find his own way as we are very individual in that area but maybe I am just missing out a few basics or with big luck your approach works fairly well for me and I can adjust it to my favour. This is what I did all the time basically. Adjusting well-known techniques to make them fit me. It just takes a few weeks that I have to stick around.

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In the simplest of terms I work on self awareness during the day and then use WBTB at night - which is a huge boost to the chances of becoming lucid. When I started I would mostly only do WBTB on the weekends, almost always using SSILD. Let me know if you have more questions.

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Originally Posted by ExothermReacton

Had a significant boost in vividness last night. The dreams felt surprisingly real so I take that as a sign that I am doing things right so far.

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That is a great sign! :)

I apologize for the slow response. I was out of town.

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Originally Posted by fogelbise

I apologize for the slow response. I was out of town.

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Don't worry, people have lifes and it is good that way!:D

Last night was great for me and fairly interesting. I had lucid in that I could actually do a bit of stuff. Most interesting was the way I got lucid though. I woke up in an unknown room with a few friends around me already talking. Taking a look at the clock I saw that it was 2:24 (it didn't specify am or pm). That was a strange time! It was totally bright outside so it couldn't be 2:24 am but I would never sleep until 2:24 pm either. I remembered the last thing I did before being here, which was going to sleep (well, I had one or two dreams before but I couldn't remember them in the dream itself) and I knew what I should be doing after waking up today, which was getting up early to go to university. In other words, nothing made sense anymore and I was 99% sure that it was a dream. To test it I simply walked outside and made a "little" jump that turned out to be 4 meters high. A friend followed me and we just jumped around the roofs of the houses. I intended something different for the night actually but most of the time I get caught up in the first thing that is fun.

Guess, it is about training to get more vividness and more memory of dream goals. At the moment my vividness feels a bit like being a bit sleepy. So it is easy to forget about my goals and sometimes I make fairly stupid decisions.

My approach is probably best described as mindfulness. I work on becoming a lucid person, 24x7. Being aware in the moment of experience, being aware in the moment of response to experience, with the subtext of identifying and remaining aware of my state ("am I dreaming or awake?"). That plus intent to lucid dream, meditation (I'm very sporadic still at this point), trying to WILD while falling asleep, and reaching for dream recall every time I find myself awake.

Thanks for explaining your approaches, you two! I nearly forgot about SSILD to be honest although it is such an easy technique actually. Meditation might be interesting as well. Not sure if WILD is my thing. I had a few random successes with it but not more. The problem is that I naturally think a lot and that is what you DON'T want to do when WILDing. Might give it another shot anyway.

Yes I suffer a similar affliction of having a very active mind. I tend also to wake up very quickly. Which is why WILD I think eludes me for the most part. Meditation is the answer, I believe, assiduously developing a mind that can be come completely still at a moment's notice. The best WILDers also have mastered the ability to completely relax body and mind at will. These are good things to work on!

Most of my LD's during my first 3 years of adult practice came as DILD's after performing SSILD, so I really love it. If you connected with it at all, it may be worth continuing.

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Originally Posted by ExothermReacton

Last night was great for me and fairly interesting. I had lucid in that I could actually do a bit of stuff. Most interesting was the way I got lucid though. I woke up in an unknown room with a few friends around me already talking. Taking a look at the clock I saw that it was 2:24 (it didn't specify am or pm). That was a strange time! It was totally bright outside so it couldn't be 2:24 am but I would never sleep until 2:24 pm either. I remembered the last thing I did before being here, which was going to sleep (well, I had one or two dreams before but I couldn't remember them in the dream itself) and I knew what I should be doing after waking up today, which was getting up early to go to university. In other words, nothing made sense anymore and I was 99% sure that it was a dream. To test it I simply walked outside and made a "little" jump that turned out to be 4 meters high. A friend followed me and we just jumped around the roofs of the houses. I intended something different for the night actually but most of the time I get caught up in the first thing that is fun.

Guess, it is about training to get more vividness and more memory of dream goals. At the moment my vividness feels a bit like being a bit sleepy. So it is easy to forget about my goals and sometimes I make fairly stupid decisions.

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Congratulations on the LD!! :D If goal memories don't pop into your mind immediately, I see nothing wrong with having fun!

Yes, for me, it seems that vividness and clear memory of dream goals come with higher level lucid dreams. Those higher levels seem to coincide with times when I am experiencing stronger self-awareness. I follow the type that Sageous teaches. Let me know if you need a link to his self awareness lessons. There are other factors that can affect the level such as: the way in which your lucidity was triggered in a DILD, coming into the dream aware (either via WILD or from a transition), your recent level of presence in your regular dreams (general dream awareness) and probably many other factors that I am forgetting or haven't discovered yet. The bottom line is that you can definitely improve that over time and even in the shorter term with harder work. I tend to not put in a lot of "harder work" but rather focus on the parts of the practice that I enjoy. I do end up putting in a decent amount of time into lucid dreaming or things related to it because of my love of lucid dreaming…so it doesn't really feel like work any longer.

I also wanted to say that I like FM's approach because it can produce faster results in your waking life. I have become more mindful more as a side effect of lucid dreams I have had and my lucid dreaming practices, but putting mindfulness front and center can produce quicker results in waking life mindfulness while also being great for lucid dreaming. Everyone that keeps at it seems to find the path that fits them best and probably vice versa! (Those who find the path that fits them best, tend to keep at it.)

Let us know if you have any questions.

Would be nice if you could post the link about self awareness as I didn't practice it much yet (at least not on purpose).

Sure, here it is :) http://www.dreamviews.com/wild/13181...prep-part.html

(It's under the WILD lessons, but it is great for lucid dreaming in general.)

The guide included one major idea that is so obvious but gets overseen so easily. Everyone is talking about dream control and how to achieve it but to be honest, we all have it already. We create the dream so we control every aspect of it. What people do, what things look like etc.. The only difference is that this kind of control is subconcious, nothing we think about. So all we need to do is basically linking our concious control with the subconcious one. All in all a very helpful guide. Thank you!:)

My dreams have gained some craziness in the last night. I usually have quite a lot of them but missed them in the last time. Just to give you a taste of my favourite one of this night:

Dark creatures are invading the park I am in. It seemed so peaceful but I could hear how they quickly moved around the hedges leaving a windblow behind them. There was a small pond in front of me and a pantheon-like building behind it. As I had no time to waste I just ran through the shallow pond and stepped in to the pantheon. To my surprise I had found a secret mechanism that lowered the ground under me very slowly. When I was at the bottom a weird hall awaited me. It looked like an overdimensional toy room just that there was an endless void in the floor here and there. What I had found was the secret base of the creatures and their leader was.... a giant tentacle with a huge eye in it. It wasn't even floating but hanging from the ceiling using strings. It was cursing something inunderstandable.

I really had to smile when I woke up.:rolllaugh:

Just to make sure if I got the "self awareness" part right. What I do is basically regularly asking myself what I did before and what I am about to do as a first step. Then I go over to the part where I observe how the world around me influences me and how I influence the world. Something like "The wind is cooling my face, the people walking by me notice me for a while, I am moving the pebbles under my feet."

Is that how it is meant to be?

I wouldn't worry too much about "getting it [self-awareness] right." As long as you're focusing on paying attention to your experiences, and reflecting on them, and working in memory , you're pretty much doing what you need. I for one don't jive with the "influencing" part of this description of self-awareness. A much better summary for me is "*I*....am *here*.....*now*...having this experience."

To begin with, even just working on learning to realize when you've zoned out (gotten lost in thoughts or activities) is profitable.

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

I wouldn't worry too much about "getting it [self-awareness] right." As long as you're focusing on paying attention to your experiences, and reflecting on them, and working in memory , you're pretty much doing what you need.

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Agreed…I believe FM came to his position after a good number of months of practice. I know I came to mine after a good number of months of working with Sageous' guide. When I first started working with self-awareness I didn't really "get it" the same way that I do now and I am sure it is something that I will continue to grow with. If you do what FM says in the quote here for long enough, you should come to a point where you find your own way to connect to the basic idea. One idea I connected with earlier on was to really stop and to really look around in "wonder" when doing these self-awareness check-ins.

Thank you! That helped me a bit to create a concept on my own. So far one good result is that I get generally more aware in my real life. Hard to believe how many big or small things you normally ignore as your brain says "I know that already, who cares?". Seeing effect in real life should at some point cause effect in dreaming. At least I hope.:D

Yes fogelbise puts it very well: you need to stick with some form of it long enough for something to "click" inside you and feel a connection. It's almost impossible to put into words, you just need to experience it! Keep it up, and work to continue detecting and defeating that "autopilot" enemy!

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Seeing effect in real life should at some point cause effect in dreaming. At least I hope

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Absolutely! And I like to call it "waking life" -- dreaming life is just as real!

The Tibetan dream yogis consider this the sequence: 1) awareness in the moment of experience, 2) awareness in the moment of behavior (response to experience), 3) awareness in dreams. You can't jump ahead in this sequence, each one must be mastered in turn. (For consistent awareness, sure you can have LDs here and there along the way).

As I realized that competitions greatly motivate me to practice lucid dreaming I thought about setting up my own lucid dreaming game after the current competition is done. I dreamed about the game and I liked the concept after waking up quite a lot. It is a copperative game with an unlimited number of players in that all go on a journey and try to progress by completing tasks.

I may even start sign ups to gather a few people already. The thought is very motivating so it is always worth a try I guess! This might be a good way to practice and share results with other lucid dreamers.

Sounds good to me! I'm always looking for fun multi-dreamer motivating activities!

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.

All in all the new things I learned in the past weeks have been so effective and I thank you for helping to this point! It is hard to decide though what I want to especially work on now that I am nearly back on track. I wish for more vivdness but also more stability. On the other hand I want to expand the control I have. There are so many choices and I am sure that there will be always something to do.

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Originally Posted by ExothermReacton

The "What did I do before?" question is so powerful

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Indeed: it is a combination of memory and reflection. Developing an "always on" reflective quality of mind is one of the key ingredients that very frequent lucid dreamers usually mention having.

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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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..

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.