Thread: Tommo's Workbook

I've decided to focus on recall mostly. I'm still going to *try* to do ADA, RC's, and my fledgling technique, as well as the occasional WILD attempt.

But I think I should focus on recall primarily. I'm back to writing in the one sentence dreams thread. Also I think 10:00 is the best time for me to go to bed. Hopefully I can determine my REM periods a little better. Sleep as Android isn't very accurate for REM tbh.
When I have time I'm going to try and get iamcoder's program to work.

Also having a look at TOTM and TOTY now, hopefully that will keep my motivation up!

Originally Posted by tommo

Also having a look at TOTM and TOTY now hopefully that will keep my motivation up!

Good luck!

So I managed to DILD last night. Only problem is I can't remember what brought it on. I was in a boring environment so I decided to change it by closing my eyes (THANKS FOGELBISE!) it worked! I flew around for a bit because of course I completely forgot about the TOTM/TOTY. lol I started worrying the dream would fade, so of course it did. And I can't really remember what happened after that tbh. May have woken up or went non-lucid. I need to work on recall still.

Congratulations Tommo!! Sensei calls it the closed eye teleport, pretty awesome way to change scenes!

Recall improved dramatically just by letting myself wake up naturally, in the last 2 days. Had about 3 or 4 SP experiences last night too.
Kept waking up from dreams in to SP, but couldn't get back.

One of them: I was having loud sex, then heard my brother walk past the room saying to other people "he's asleep and making all these *imitates my sex sounds* noises".
I thought "oh shit", and kinda checked on my real sleeping body, but woke up. It's way too hard to do that without waking up. Wasn't lucid either.
Woke straight in to SP, with the goddamn cats again.... it's always cats. One time it was a UFO, but that's it.
This time I didn't have the overwhelming need to check just to make sure no one was actually in my room to murder me (sleep on my stomach, so could just hear and feel a cat jumping and walking on my bed.
I just kind of noted the cat noises and tried to visualise the dream again.
I didn't get any visuals at all. Lots of body vibrations and that's about it
The cat jumped off my bed, it faded and I repositioned and went back to sleep.

I read FryingMan's general guide to lucid dreaming last night, and I think it totally resonates with me. I'm gonna follow that, especially enjoying my dreams in general, not just seeking lucidity.

One of the main reasons I want to LD is to experience more things before I die. Don't just wanna remember nothing for 1/3rd of my life. However I just realised normal dreams can do this just as well as LD's.

I'm glad the "Unified Theory" resonated with you. Pay attention, reflect, recall, day and night the same! Build your practice however you like as long as you incorporate those things. Love all your dreams! They're all awesome. The memories are there whether or not you were lucid. Here's a fun secret fact: non-lucid dreams are often *more* fun and interesting than lucid ones! Lucidity is awesome, but I'm pretty sure I don't want every dream to be lucid. Just every 2nd dream .

Haha, well I'd certainly classify them as interesting. My dreams are almost 100% insane. Every time I start improving my recall I'm like "why am I doing this.... I don't want to remember this" lol
On the plus side I have a sex dream almost every night, so

Originally Posted by tommo

I read FryingMan's general guide to lucid dreaming last night, and I think it totally resonates with me. I'm gonna follow that, especially enjoying my dreams in general, not just seeking lucidity.

One of the main reasons I want to LD is to experience more things before I die. Don't just wanna remember nothing for 1/3rd of my life. However I just realised normal dreams can do this just as well as LD's.

So true!! I wanted to wait until FM saw your compliment before replying because sometimes we switch off if the other one has already replied.

Originally Posted by tommo

Haha, well I'd certainly classify them as interesting. My dreams are almost 100% insane. Every time I start improving my recall I'm like "why am I doing this.... I don't want to remember this" lol
On the plus side I have a sex dream almost every night, so

Awesome!

Forgot to write yesterday, I had a another SP. Went to bed at a normal time and felt like I didn't sleep until 3AM.
I'm pretty sure I did though, but stayed conscious between the very short REM periods. Time seemed to go too quickly, so pretty sure.
Was strange.

Anyway, I had a very, very short LD lol. I was dreaming, woke up slightly and realised it was a dream instantly, started imagining the dream scene again (which was my room, so a bit easier to imagine).
Briefly entered a dream (still in my bed) where I looked at my hands, then got tossed around back in to my real body. Woke up in SP.
I got the old hag this time Didn't see anything again coz I was on my stomach, but I felt it crawl up and sit on my chest. It's REALLY hard not to get concerned. It feels like so much pressure!
I could tell I was breathing normally, but the "pressure" is very hard to ignore. Couldn't get back in to a dream.

However I think I'm slowly getting the hang of transitioning with the WILD. You kind of just have to take a chance at a certain point? It seems like if you sit there waiting for a dream to appear it's unlikely to happen.
I only remember a couple of times where I actually got "dropped" in to a dream. It seems like putting your mind in the dream and moving is better, since it guarantees you'll stay conscious as well.

Congratulations on another LD!! WILD is not my area of expertise, but I tend to agree with you based on some of my limited experiences. Sometimes I am waiting "for REM" only to find out that I am already dreaming.

On the old hag: I am not sure if my experiences are similar to yours because, besides my one 99%-sure SP experience, most of my old hag type scenarios seem more like a dream where I am in bed and someone is on top of me. In those situations I have had great success in imagining that that weight on me is a very beautiful woman instead of something concerning and converting the experience to a big positive experience. You kind of have to decide that there is little chance that someone is actually in your room who decided to sit on you. I would also get a good number of weird sensations that would be hard to determine if it was my wife IWL, HH's, an FA or a dream in general. I found that assuming it is a dream gives you the best chance of realizing you are dreaming - lucid dreaming!

Originally Posted by tommo

Forgot to write yesterday, I had a another SP. Went to bed at a normal time and felt like I didn't sleep until 3AM.
I'm pretty sure I did though, but stayed conscious between the very short REM periods. Time seemed to go too quickly, so pretty sure.
Was strange.

Anyway, I had a very, very short LD lol. I was dreaming, woke up slightly and realised it was a dream instantly, started imagining the dream scene again (which was my room, so a bit easier to imagine).
Briefly entered a dream (still in my bed) where I looked at my hands, then got tossed around back in to my real body. Woke up in SP.
I got the old hag this time Didn't see anything again coz I was on my stomach, but I felt it crawl up and sit on my chest. It's REALLY hard not to get concerned. It feels like so much pressure!
I could tell I was breathing normally, but the "pressure" is very hard to ignore. Couldn't get back in to a dream.

However I think I'm slowly getting the hang of transitioning with the WILD. You kind of just have to take a chance at a certain point? It seems like if you sit there waiting for a dream to appear it's unlikely to happen.
I only remember a couple of times where I actually got "dropped" in to a dream. It seems like putting your mind in the dream and moving is better, since it guarantees you'll stay conscious as well.

Congrats on the LD! Yes, WILD is tricky. Sometimes a scene presents itself, sometimes it doesn't. I think this has to do with just how much awareness you have active. It also leads me to wonder if a scene can form at all if one is truly, firmly aware. But I'm still poor at WILD so I don't have enough experience to say. In my anecdotal experience, a scene only forms if I have a moment of disorientation: I "snap back" at the moment the scene forms, but I was not fully aware in the moments before it formed. It also leads me to think I may have had a lot more "false still awakes" when I thought my WILD had failed but in fact was dreaming of continuing my WILD. FAs are so tricky that unless you have some clues from the visual field (like your room doesn't look right), it can be nearly impossible to detect them. Yes, sometimes I think you just have to take the chance. One strategy is to move your "dream body," which is done by will alone without using muscles. Other people have good luck with trying to levitate. Sensei teleports: when it works, he knows he's dreaming! The good thing about these latter approaches is that they don't risk physical movement.

Originally Posted by fogelbise

In those situations I have had great success in imagining that that weight on me is a very beautiful woman instead of something concerning and converting the experience to a big positive experience.

hard to determine if it was my wife IWL, HH's, an FA or a dream in general. I found that assuming it is a dream gives you the best chance of realizing you are dreaming - lucid dreaming!

That is a good one lol I'll try it out if it happens again.

I do believe SP is basically a dream. I don't think it is anything special. I'm quite sure I'm not actually awake at all, although I'd like to see studies on this.
One time I could even move, kind of. I was facing my wall and then somehow turned and was facing my window. With crazy stuff happening, devils everywhere, UFO blasting air in my window and stuff flying everywhere. But I still couldn't really move.
I've never tried to stay conscious with eyes open until it ends to see if there's a clean transition to waking, with the hallucinations slowly fading out.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Sometimes a scene presents itself, sometimes it doesn't. I think this has to do with just how much awareness you have active. It also leads me to wonder if a scene can form at all if one is truly, firmly aware. But I'm still poor at WILD so I don't have enough experience to say. In my anecdotal experience, a scene only forms if I have a moment of disorientation: I "snap back" at the moment the scene forms, but I was not fully aware in the moments before it formed.

Because of this. I think we get SP if we become aware again just a little bit earlier, so we assume we are still in the same place, so we dream of our room.
It would also explain why people seem to get more SP while practicing WILD.

Anyway, enough sleepy-brain conjecture....
I usually get this lapse in consciousness as well, I just sometimes suddenly become aware as soon as I see something.
However this is also why WILD sucks tbh. You have to be ready to enter REM almost straight away, which is way too difficult to time correctly.

I also like the thinking of moving idea FryingMan, I'll give that a go as well, thanks!

Recall was good last night, finally! Still no LD. However I remembered looking at some small object I was holding in my hand. I didn't check my fingers!
I've been trying to do this in waking life. If I am doing something with my hands I'll look at them to do an RC.
Hopefully realising my mistake very shortly after waking up while I was still in that post-dream HH stage is a good sign.

Recall improving again. Remembered two dreams from this morning.

Also I just realised I'm not really using this workbook thing correctly.... Forgot this was supposed to be about DILD specifically.

In that case, I'm having some trouble waking up after each dream. I used to be able to do this just by thinking "I will wake up after each dream" before sleep at night.
Then it started happening all the time once it became a habit. Any tips for getting to that stage again?
I found it helped a lot with both recall and becoming conscious during the night, which could carry over to being conscious in dreams.

I also am having trouble becoming conscious in the morning. I've been laying there barely conscious for ages, slipping back in to mini dreams etc. until I finally become conscious and get up.
I was doing well with my technique I was supposed to be practicing/trialling, but now I can't seem to get back to that level.
I was at the stage where I'd start becoming conscious just before the end of my last dream.

Auto-suggestion should do the trick. Repeating the suggestion that you "wake up after each dream", if you wish. Repeat it whenever you later remember that you forgot to do it as well and especially remind yourself before bed and during as many awakenings as you can. I definitely don't do it after every REM cycle myself, focusing most of my energy on WBTB, but I have gotten into a habit of doing it as I wake up for WBTB and then during the awakenings and mini-awakenings in the later morning.

Thanks, I will do that.

I've remembered a couple of dreams from last night and it's given me a bit more motivation to continue improving.
My dreams can be seriously screwed up, but last night reminded me they can also be really clever and funny.
I wish I was that clever and funny during waking life