Thread: When I First Started Lucid Dreaming, I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me...

Originally Posted by Sensei

The audio is here.

This is an audio about things that I wish people would have told me when I first started LDing. The audio explains it all. Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks, Sensei! Here are my notes from the audio, it makes an approximate outline:

I wish that someone had told me:

+ Dreamviews site

+ ETWOLD

+ It's not hard to get one lucid dream, but it's hard to become "a lucid dreamer."

+ How hard it is, and how easy it is

+ Every night: takes determination and hard work, motivation. The hard part is the consistency to do the work every day. If you want change in your life, it's not just a project, but a process.

+ Persistent realm takes a long time to set up.

+ How fun it was, and simultaneously "how much it sucked.". Sometimes it's the worse thing in the world: not the dreams, generally, but the days where you don't want to move forwards, where you keep going for no reason other than you're afraid the "future you" will be mad at you for quitting. I wish someone had told me that both of these things are true at all times.

+ The farther you get into it, the harder and easier it is. Long dry spells hurt.

+ To DJ with a purpose. Helps with recall but not as much as you think. Sensei tags throughout the night and only records dreams "worth recording."

+ No one had told me about the limits

+ SP, how it's not needed for LDing

+ What you could expect from LDs: abilities increase over time
LD count barriers:
3-4 most quit
20-25 about 6 month - 1 year mark, a few goals, starting to fade, not new & fresh
50 take a break from LDing, never come back, not as important
Every 50 easier
100 Lding is part of them, won't just go away, giving it up takes a decision, "it's no longer worth it"
The more you get, the more you realize what it's going to take
300 college, it takes a big lifestyle change to quit at this point
500 they give up, somber defeat, huge depression (half way to 1000, *half way*)
After 500, 1000 you obviously know how to get lucid

+ a LD is just a dream in which you know that you're dreaming, your notion about what dreams are will probably not change

+ That it's all worth it, as far as hobbies go.

+ Don't give up on any dream because of the time it's going to take to accomplish it, the time is going to pass anyway.

+ You can always get great help and advice from the DreamViews Academy: ask as many questions as you can


My response:

Oh, boy, do dry spells hurt. 2, 3, 4 weeks, oh the pain!

Future me would kick my ass so hard if I quit: I *know* I would always return to it. So why not just cut out all the lost progress ahead of time, and never quit?! Quitting is just not an option.

Also, "the time will pass anyway," I came across that, too, and it's become one of my main points.

Life happens, so the "trying" intensity may wax and wane over time on any particular day, but for me, it will never reduce to zero. That's my plan and I'm sticking to it!

QUOTE from synopsis "giving it up takes a decision, "it's no longer worth it"
The more you get, the more you realize what it's going to take"

Only in the low 40's but I don't think that having a focus only on luicd dreams will be conducive to continuing. When you work on journaling and recall, it shouldn't be oh well only a fragment of a dream, so I'm pretty sure no lucids were forgotten, I think I'll just not try to recall some other worthless non-lucid stuff. When you wake up from a dream where you got to see cool stuff or do cool things, or noticed things that were impossible but didn't trigger, I don't think... drat only cool non-lucids this sucks.

I am in the middle of a dry spell and I am one of those people that almost only lucid dreams on weekends, (probably a stress thing), so I'll likely be heading into week 5+ of dryspell after tomorrow. I don't think drat, I'm going to go to sleep and dream and it won't even be lucid. I know that whether or not I lucid dream I will dream (I'm sure I dream almost every night) and because its a weekend I know I'll remember several dreams or at least fragments. I can look forward to those. So lucid dreaming isn't the only reward for trying to have and remember dreams.

Lucid dreaming is a skill and we will all get at least somewhat better at it if we continue to try. As for people leaving, I think that one of the biggest advancements is EILD, which is not far from making Lucid dreaming much easier for those with the skill. Lets say I'm a non lucid dreamer with a thousand bucks in my pocket and I hear the big news that the frontier has finally arrived and I have no skill at all, I put the thing on my head, I go to sleep, I set it for the first dream to alert me on the first second and low and behold I wake up inside my dream, it is blurry and I don't know anything and I lose the dream, or wake up throughout the night with lame 2 second lucid dream after lame 2 second lucid dream. I toss the thing in the trash and go back to sleep.

Now imagine all those people who left dream views at 25+, they hear the news they spend 500 bucks on a less awesome innovation than the 1000 buck one. They set it by their bed side, the set their alarm, they wake up oh drat it now I remember I'm gonna do that lucid thing I gave up because it was so hard. They do what ever WBTB things they used to do, then they put the thing on their head, set to go off a few minutes into the dream. 20-40 minutes later, they realize something isn't right. What do they do, they stabilize, they take control, and they have a great lucid dream. They will be rewarded for the skills they learned now when it was hard, as surely as the technology will fail those who think it will be easy with their new toy and no effort.

Counting every lucid dream is something that I do (at least all the ones I remember I have recovered 2 lost lucid dreams after waking up from 'not dreaming'), I did credit myself with 5 historic lucids from childhood (of course I don't know how many I really had but I remember several clearly). My current total is 41 so does that mean that I had 36 awesome dreams in the last year, no. I would trade many of the 5-15 second variety and even many of the 3 min variety for the good ones. Also I have had Lucids in which I couldn't gain the control I wanted and actually tried to commit dream suicide so I could just wake up and start over, of course looking back they were both awesome experiences.

For me I know that when the technology comes I will be able to take advantage of it. And I will not just trigger because I am becoming aware at the end of a dream and am about to wake up. I know it will often be more like when something familiar and dream-like causes me to become lucid early in a dream when I don't even need to stabilize and a cool 10+ minute dream is on the way.

I think perhaps sometime in the next 2 years you will see a return of people to luicid dreaming that just needed a bit of techno help.

Even if I can't remember any dream fragments, I can still enjoy other peoples dream experiences on Dream Views, the threads on "ways I missed becoming lucid" alone are often awesome. Hearing others people's lucid experiences is great fun too.

So I would put it this way, what if you had played basket ball with a bunch of great people, and made great friends, but never won a game, would you tell your son, don't do it boy it is good but it sucks at the same time, a bunch of great friends isn't gonna light up the score board, go join the coin tossing club at least you'll win half the time.

With an attitude like that focused only one the awesome, it dooms you to mostly failure. I can just see your son in the future telling your grandson "Sure boy I called a lotta heads, and I won half the time but I could'a been out there chasing tails instead, it wasn't worth it, all those tosses and I never even landed an edge"

As for me I doubt I'll give up one of my dream goals is to toss a coin and land it on edge I'm sure I'll make it. If not now then when the Germans hook me into their lucid dreaming induction device in Frankfurt

This is definitely true and my biggest motivator is being afraid of my future self feeling deep disappointment that I gave up. I have had several dreams about my future self contemplating the fact that nothing was really stopping me except my own attitudes. No one can stop me from sticking with it except myself.