Thread: ExothermReacton's workbook

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!

Originally Posted by ExothermReacton

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!