archdreamer's lucid dreaming journal

I'll be recording summaries and analyses of (some of) my lucid dreams in here, when I remember to. Some context: I can induce LDs often when I am trying to (for a very lax definition of 'trying': mainly this means forming an intention to remember my dreams). I'm not a natural, but I think I am getting close to becoming one, at least in terms of induction. When I am trying to have lucid dreams, every now and then I'll have a short dry spell where I remember almost nothing from when I am asleep, and I sometimes go for months without doing any LD work. It's a cyclical thing for me. I get interested, then I get discouraged, or I get lazy and drop it for a while. Usually both. But, I am back on the horse, and this time I don't forsee any RL stuff messing with my sleep too much in the next few months. Every lucid dream I have remembered (probably around 300 of them so far) has been short and unstable, so my main focus is on keeping my dreams together.

Lucid dreaming is a lot like work for me; it's hard to stay motivated. My primary motivation is the improvement of my skills (towards having lucid dreams that are actually rewarding someday), so I'm starting this journal as a way to see if and how I am progressing towards proficiency, and to reflect on my experiences in order to better focus my efforts. It's been years, but I'm still pushing for that first 'proper' LD ;-).

Anyway, I'll begin with last night. Comments welcomed on any entry here.

Night preceding 28/3/09: 1 LD | DILD

Ordinary DILD. Should have done an RC, didn't. On a beach at the edge of a river, a city in the distance. Dusk. A DC wanted to know how to stabilise dreams, I demonstrated to him how to use dream sensations to ground yourself in the dream, because I needed to do that anyway. Picking up sand, letting it fall between my fingers, talking out loud, looking around. Looking at the sky and horizon, things kept changing each time I looked. Too preoccupied to worry about it, as I realised that I could only open my eyes halfway. Trying to open them further faded the visuals. I often have problems like this. Should have stopped to think, but the dream was falling apart because I was distracted by this eye thing. Walked down the river a way, then the dream really began to collapse. I held it together mentally for a few seconds (hard to explain this), then decided it was futile, and woke up. I may have had an FA at this point, not sure.

Things to fix:
- Got to RC when I DILD. And regularly afterwards, to guard against loss of awareness.
- I try to sit down, stabilise, and think when I DILD. I need to follow through with this more, and stay put, even if something goes wrong, until I have stabilised the dream completely (if I ever get this far).
- Got to learn not to panic so goddamn much when the dream begins to end. Need to let go earlier, and focus on maintaining lucidity, to give a better chance of picking up FAs and chances to WILD easily.
- On a similar note, got to make a real habit of RCing upon waking. It's just stupid not to.

Night preceding 4/4/09:

Woke up. Something felt wrong, did an RC. Dreaming. Must have been an FA. Everything was dim. I went to feel the carpet, for the tactile sensation. I realised that my eyes were almost completely closed, and I could only see a dim, narrow section of my usual field of view. I remembered what I had planned to do in this case, tried to prise them open with my hands. It felt weird, but didn't improve the visuals much, and I think it killed the dream. I awoke. Did an RC. Still dreaming. Still can't see properly. I stumbled out of bed, and quite quickly lost the dream. This time I awoke properly.

Night preceding 5/4/09:

I am in a strange building. I go to an apartment, which is apparently where I live. What the hell, the doorway is so narrow. Do I live here, or do I live [where I actually live]? Did I move? I kind of remember moving. So confused, sluggish. Wait. I RC. It's a dream. The clarity of my awareness shoots up. The dream, of course, begins to destabilise. I'm going to lose this dream any second. In frustration, I dive head first into the wall, plunging through into enveloping blackness. My awareness hangs there for a few moments, I wake up. An RC indicates that I am really awake.

Night preceding 10/4/09:

I had a lucid dream last night, in which I basically went with the flow. I maintained awareness that what I was experiencing was a dream, while not acting on it. It didn't collapse. At one point, I was watching a television screen as part of the dream plot. At this point I thought 'okay, so maybe this dream really is stable', and decided to do some other things; that is, I exercised my lucidity. As soon as I looked somewhere that the dream didn't suggest to me, it started to destabilise. However, at that point, I realised that perhaps I had been acting differently when I was acting on the guidance of the dream. It felt as though the way I went to look at something, when I did it deliberately, was somewhat different to the way in which I was looking around beforehand. It was as if I was not moving my dream-body exclusively, and that part of my efforts were inadvertantly directed towards my real body. Further, when the dream did react to my movement, I did seem to see a mixture of dream images, and what I could expect to see when my eyes are closed (back of eyelids). This experience has prompted me to reconsider the reasons behind my continual failure to keep lucid dreams going.

I must now consider the possibility that I'm simply using the wrong sort of method of movement when I become lucid. I may spend a lucid dream just observing the sensation of movement in a dream when going with the flow, to try to spot any difference.

The part or parts of the mind that handle the story, places, characters, etc. are really really good at maintaining all of those things simultaneously. I think one problem with keeping things together is that when the conscious mind steps in and says, "I want this to happen," those parts of the mind that were keeping everything going give up and let the conscious mind take over. But the conscious mind is not designed to run all of those things at once and gaps start to form while it switches tasks. It's like having a CPU step in and tell your video and sound cards to stand aside while it does their jobs for them or a shift manager dismissing an entire assembly line to make a product alone.