Thread: Pornocrates's Workbook

Originally Posted by fogelbise

Yes, dream sign visualization can be successful. I would just focus on the one most common dream sign that you can visualize clearly. I have used it successfully, mostly during WBTB or just before going to bed.

On the waking life and sleep issues, I don't have a lot of experience or expertise but for sleep see if this article helps: 10 Tips to Reset Your Internal Clock - Sleep Center - Everyday Health (seems the site is not selling anything but ads)

On the waking life issues, you mentioned getting angry at yourself. Catching any negative thought loops can be helped through mindfulness and meditation. Try to not criticize or judge yourself, just try to catch yourself when you are not thinking or acting optimally…more like "I was thinking this way…ah...good catch!" Not "I was thinking this way, why am I always making that mistake." It takes time for sure and simple breathing exercises help also. You will notice your breathing patterns change when you are not at the optimal state. A simple one exercise to start with is breathing in goodness, and breathing out any negatives with a cleansing breath. It can do wonders.

Thanks for your answer fogelbise!

I will make it part of my pre-sleep routine then, visualizing myself getting lucid in my hometown.

These tips are great thank you, some of them I found on a documentary this afternoon, something interesting is "The three 9":
-9 hours of sleep
-No screens after 9
-No work/school before nine

My first steps will be, no screens at least 2 hours before bed, and set schedules. The morning is difficult I always want one more sleep cycle...

I need to get a grip on these emotions, most of the time I can't really think straight because of these. Mindfulness and meditation help me but when you're driven by sadness/anger/anxiety it's really hard to bring yourself to do those. Anyway it always helps and I need to fully assimilate this principle. Thanks a lot for your support fogelbise!

Time to really get back to LDing!

I didn't try to induce for a month due to my exams but I kept DJing except for a few days where I was too tired. Therefore, my DR is not as strong as it was in April.

I kinda have a plan to follow in order to put things in order:
I'm going to focus on regular sleep schedules for the next week (or 2 weeks) as I always felt it was preventing me from having more LDs. And also recall, I'd like to try to reach a lot, like 6 and more every night, I know I can do it, just gotta set the intention and manage my schedules. However I won't give up on induction, I'm on holidays so I have all the time I want, I will nap and try WILD as well. I will also keep on focusing meditation/SA/mindfulness. I'm so pumped up!

Nice, summer breaks! Those were the days! When you are really feeling it, maybe spend a lot of time reading the well reviewed lucid dreaming books and perhaps outlining plans for your night ahead among other things, but be sure the ease off a little if you are feeling like you are tiring of the subject so that you can maintain some level of LD practices throughout your summer break. Towards the end of the break perhaps you can formulate a plan for integrating some level of LD practices even amongst your busiest periods of studies and exams. Just some ideas. Hope to see you around

Thank you for your precious advice fogelbise.
Would you have some good recommendations? I already read ETWOLD and Gateway to the Inner self.

I don't really know why but I have a hard time bringing myself to bed before at least 2AM and when I do I'm too tired to focus on anything. I try to repeat to myself "I'm dreaming" but it keeps me awake. I definitely need to get better habits concerning health: sleep, exercising and all.

I didn't sleep much last night, will try to go to bed before 1. Until I sort ou my sleep schedules my main work will be DR, mindfulness (got a nice app with a bell ringing regularly in order to bring my self to the moment) and setting intentions!

I really liked "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep" It's sort of the ultimate book that started it all, you'll be amazed at all the of the parallels modern-day LDing practice has compared to the Tibetan practice. They basically invented LD practice: daytime awareness, night-time intention, WBTB, dream recall, WILD.

Good sleep and a calm, positive mental attitude are pretty important. So is timing.

I also can't fall asleep to a mantra. Try alternating between breaths with the mantra and some breaths without the mantra, perhaps decreasing the frequency of the mantra as you go, like,:

1, I'm dreaming
2
3 I'm dreaming
4
5
6 I"m dreaming
7
8
9 I'm dreaming
10
11
12 I'm dreaming
13
14
15
16 I'm dreaming
17
18
19
20 I'm dreaming

so that you tail off the frequency of the mantra the more relaxed you get.

^See FM's post, if you haven't yet. I think there are also a good number of books that will add to your knowledge and keep your mind on lucid dreaming (you can read 10 minutes at a time if you want to). As long as they aren't full of misinformation. I think the ratings on Amazon give you a decent idea but some others are Daniel Love's Are You Dreaming (I enjoyed it. He is giving away a free e-copy, though not sure when you get it, for contributing at any level for his Kickstarter campaign and sharing his campaign on social media, seemingly for as little as 1 British Pound). I also enjoyed the 2 you mentioned. Waggoner also has Lucid Dreaming, Plain and Simple but I have only gotten to chapter 2. Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming seems good for mostly beginners. There are some good ebooks I have seen online like The Ultimate Lucid Dreamers Manual as well as Advanced Lucid Dreaming - The Power of Supplements (has some useful opening information before it goes into supplement info if you aren't interested in the supplement side). I'm quite sure there is a thread somewhere on DV where people discuss LD books but I can't seem to find it at the moment.

"The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep"? I have a sample on my kindle but never fully read it, I will change that!

Hum calm attitude is not on of my traits, I've had a lot on my mind recently and that's the reason why I can't focus on pretty much anything. I am sometimes able to fall asleep with a mantra and in this case I have a LD or at least vivid dreams but I feel too jittery to do that right now. That might be because I don't make the most of my days since the end of my finals and I don't feel like going to bed because I'm not satisfied with how I spend my time. Study, reading, exercising and meditation will help settling this problem.

Alternating breaths is a great idea, I began to do it naturally but didn't really consider it. Thank you FM!

Fogelbise: Actually I might be curious about supplements so I'll check it out. I'll go with the Yoga of sleep and dream first, I'll make a list of all your suggestions, thank you!



As for last night: I slept from 1'45-2 AM to 11, had put an alarm at 8AM but didn't wake up for good. Fortunately I remember some parts of the dreams I had before the alarm. I also had a super vivid dream for which I used more than 2 pages of my DJ, hehe. I love those vivid dreams, when you feel really present and wake up full of emotions. Hell I even love nightmares, they're an interesting experience!

Originally Posted by Pornocrates

"The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep"? I have a sample on my kindle but never fully read it, I will change that!

It's a great book. You can skip the buddhist background first part and jump right in to the practice section.
I suggest taking it slowly, there are so many amazing insights even in the two pages of the practice intro.

Calm abiding is pretty important. Without it, we are whisked away into mindless action/reaction cycles and remain non-lucid.

I'm working on making TYoDaS the majority of my primary practice.

Lucid all night every night, baby!

Very good! Cherish those vivid dreams as well. I also can enjoy certain nightmares, but I don't get many.

Fogelbise: I don't get many too, although I had a lot as a child. Never triggered lucidity though.

FryingMan: I have a huge interest in Buddhism but I might go straight for the practice part as you recommended! I'm not a really calm person so that would be a good practice (I get excited pretty easily, i can even induce this state haha (I use it for my mantras and visualization but apart from that it's a waste of energy and I consider it might be part of a really bad catch 22 concerning my little self control). I'll give some feedback here during my reading!

PS: I find that I have very little willpower, did you try the exercises at the end of ETWOLD (Strengthening the Will) ?

Originally Posted by Pornocrates

PS: I find that I have very little willpower, did you try the exercises at the end of ETWOLD (Strengthening the Will) ?

Yep, I did them all on my first readthrough back in 2013. I have strong willpower when I really want something .

I'll do them then!

Btw, I really wanted to tell you teachers how grateful I am for all the support and advice! I'm happy I decided to participate in the forum and I would advise anyone reading the posts and wanting to LD to do the same!

^You are very welcome. I honestly want to see you grow tremendously, fast or slow, into he who you want to be. I truly feel the many interconnections between LD practices and other practices can help us all to reach new heights. We can further propel these improvements through the questions we ask and the adventures we commence within our dreams and lucid dreams. I love to help in any way that I can and I am quite sure FryingMan feels the same.

Had a Ld 2 nights ago, it was a really faint and short one. It happened during the 4 first hours of sleep so even though I took notes when I woke up and I knew I was lucid in the morning I still couldn't remember it all. But it's good to see that I can still have them!

I'm slowly getting to a better, healthier sleep, and I had a decent recall recently!

Great! Keep it up and dreams will keep getting better and better!

Great job! You've got this! It is also very impressive that you got your LD in the first 4 hours!!

Thank you!
Yeah not the first time it happens, unfortunately when it does it's a really low level LD. Almost no awareness!

Yesterday I managed to go to bed before 1AM. I turned off the lights around 00:30.
I had 4 waking: 00:30 => 7:00 => 8h45 => 9h30 => 11h00 (there might be another one but I don't remember.

8h45: I had a really intense dream about spiders (Yuck) but when I awoke I was too tired and lazy to write it down. I wrote it at 11:00 (final waking) but lacked a few details.
From the last period I had 1 very long dream about hosting a homeless person, doing my old summer job (night receptionist in hotels) and zombies (Someone had removed thei hunger for human flesh and they would just lick people and eat food: fries and all).

I'm really happy about this night, firstly because I went to bed earlier and so woke up with energy (without waking after 12:00PM), secondly because I had intense dreams. Fortunately I will have an easy time writing down my dreams tonight because I will feel less tired during the night.

When I went to bed, I used my mantra a bit, and used conscious breathing to get my mind off stressful stuff but I don't think I repeated the mantra until the end. I want to get back to setting intentions before bedtime + relaxation: mindfulness, stretching + visualization. Avoiding screens at least 1h,1h30 before going to bed would be a good thing too (even though I use flux).

Oh and Rcing whenever I woke up!

Originally Posted by Pornocrates

Oh and Rcing whenever I woke up!

That's good! See if you can move that RCing time earlier and earlier, right into the dream! If you can very quickly notice wakings, you can do all sorts of interesting DEILD approaches (The Phase, FILD, plain DEILD, etc.).

I myself tried FILD last night seriously during an early waking (one of the ones where I usually fall back asleep VERY quickly) and thought I was making some progress but my wife was too fidgety/noisy for me to make it asleep while FILDing, so I had to give it up and aim squarely for sleep.

Training yourself to notice your awakings, and in fact to strive to pay attention to the entire night, is a good thing to do from time to time. Do it only on nights where you can afford to sleep in, though, because when I've tried it it resulted in fairly poor sleep but much higher attention/awareness throughout the night.

Originally Posted by Pornocrates

Yesterday I managed to go to bed before 1AM. I turned off the lights around 00:30.
I had 4 waking: 00:30 => 7:00 => 8h45 => 9h30 => 11h00 (there might be another one but I don't remember.

Nice! I used to be more of night owl but my excitement about lucid dreaming got me to gradually move my bedtime earlier, especially on weeknights. I can now squeeze in more WBTB's on weeknights even when I have to get up earlier, because I go to bed earlier.

8h45: I had a really intense dream about spiders (Yuck) but when I awoke I was too tired and lazy to write it down. I wrote it at 11:00 (final waking) but lacked a few details.
From the last period I had 1 very long dream about hosting a homeless person, doing my old summer job (night receptionist in hotels) and zombies (Someone had removed thei hunger for human flesh and they would just lick people and eat food: fries and all).

Zombie lickers, haha! That would make a good comedy skit or perhaps more.

I'm really happy about this night, firstly because I went to bed earlier and so woke up with energy (without waking after 12:00PM), secondly because I had intense dreams. Fortunately I will have an easy time writing down my dreams tonight because I will feel less tired during the night.

This is good! Celebrating these positive results and cherishing the dreams you had can help you to build on the successes, providing motivation to continue putting in the effort.

When I went to bed, I used my mantra a bit, and used conscious breathing to get my mind off stressful stuff but I don't think I repeated the mantra until the end. I want to get back to setting intentions before bedtime + relaxation: mindfulness, stretching + visualization. Avoiding screens at least 1h,1h30 before going to bed would be a good thing too (even though I use flux).

Oh and Rcing whenever I woke up!

Yes, these are all great ideas

Yesterday was really awful, I went to bed pretty early (around 11:30PM) and did some relaxation. It worked at first but as always when I try to sleep by focusing on my breathing and getting comfortable I always end up being too aware of it and my mind keeps rushing. It's hard to explain, kind of like when you try wilding you feel like you're forcing yourself to sleep and it doesn't work.
At 1AM I decided to read a bit, I read some Marc-Aurele (His writings are really complicated to read, the phrasing is all but natural in translations so it made me drowsy) but still couldn't sleep. I ended up reading posts on reddit until 5:15AM (not a good idea but sleeplessness prevent me from thinking rationally) and then slept until 12:00 PM.

I could expect a sleepless night, I almost do nothing during my days, I don't move much, I don't exercise and I wake up late, but still it was disheartening...

I realize that when I don't go to bed before 3AM it's not only that I want to do other things, it's also simply that I'm not sleepy at all. This time was weird though because I managed to walk a bit and go study at my university and when I got back home, I got sleepy around 9:30-10PM (I guess I missed the "sleep train").

However it won't affect my will, I just need to do what I planned to do during the day (study, etc) so as to not feel remorseful once in my bed and to walk/run/exercise so as to be physically tired. At least until I get used to go to bed earlier! I might also begin by trying to go to bed around the same time every night to get my brain used to it.

(I made a small edit to the last sentence of my previous post.)

Sorry to hear about your bad night. Shake that one off (put it out of your mind, thinking instead of your previous good night) and try not to overthink it when going to bed. Maybe look for a wider window of time to latch on to some sleepiness like that 9:30-10:30 period where you got sleepy until you get used to earlier bedtimes.If you lay down and you just don't feel sleepy it is sometimes best to get up briefly and "reset."

One more thing: I just came across this article that should help you avoid issues like last night:

Insomnia: One Simple Instruction Could Prevent 80% Of Chronic Problems - PsyBlog

i also read robert waggoners book and i learned a lot from his work tbh.

Hey everybody, I'm back!

I haven't been active at all this summer, things have been awfully busy (and it still is), I recently graduated and moved out of my apartment in Paris, had to prepare all the paperwork for my visa because I am now in Japan, Tokyo for at least a year!

Anyway, even though I didn't keep on writing in my workbook I recorded my dreams on and off, and found myself thinking about LDing on a daily basis. Esp when I'm in trains, that's usually when I RC. I thought a lot about what you teachers told me about RCing and being self aware when I'm busy and also about making LDing fit into your routine. I'm still trying to find a way but I find it quite hard!

Plan: Week 1 from Monday 19 to Sunday 26 will be focused on DR with at least 1 dream/night. For Mindfulness and self awareness, whenever I think about LDing I guess but also a few sessions everyday (2 or 3 x 3 mins). I'll also use mantras at bedtime and when awakening during the night.

That program should be easygoing enough to not find myself abandoning it, anyway I'm looking forward to exchange experiences and progress with you!

Welcome back! What a big move. Tokyo must be deluge of new experiences, perhaps even somewhat dreamlike…maybe you can use that to your advantage. Dreams of being in Paris for the next year may be a good dream sign. Your plan does seem like a good way to get back to lucid dreaming practices and it is always something you can build on later when you are ready to. I look forward to hearing about your progress!