Logical Approach to LDing
Well, I'd been thinking I oughta write a tutorial for a while, so I got off my lazy arse and started. More or less, I've always had trouble with some of the existing tutorials. They're excellently written, and supply lots of help to people who look at LDing the same way, but I've always had a different approach, and thus a different method of attaining and sustaining Lucid Dreams. For the most part, my approach is identical to the existing, but I tend to part from the ways a bit when I get to Dream Guides, Dream Interpretation, and anything that could conceiveably belong in the Beyond Dreaming forum. So, I've taken the liberty of writing a tutorial.
This is the very FIRST version. No edits, not even completely finished (Section on Dream Guides and Dream Interp. still in the works, among other things). More or less, I know things need to be rearranged, clarified, and most importantly shortened. Mostly I want to focus on my Three Aspects to dreams; Desires, Fears, and the Unpredictable.
Desires- Things you want to happen, ie: Flying
Fears- Things you worry about happening, ie: Having loved ones hurt
Unpredictable- Random dream events, the sort that you find yourself doing without knowing why and assuming its normal in a dream. For example, driving to London because you'll be able to catch a pygmy chicken there to cure your friend's case of the giggles.
Anyway, those are all explained more in depth in the tutorial. It's long-winded, which is why I want to edit it for length. Hopefully you'll forgive me for the long read:
"Disclaimer:
My views and interpretations of dreaming tend towards the logical side. This tutorial will, therefore, represent the logical, rather than the mystical, view of lucid dreaming. Those of you who maintain a cryptic, mystic view of dreaming and lucid dreaming will likely find little in this tutorial to your liking. I'd suggest whole-heartedly that you read other available tutorials that fit better with your beliefs if this is the case.
Introduction:
The Nature and Composition of Dreams
I've divided dreams into three distinct categories, all of which combined create the dreams we each visit at night. Lucid dreams follow the same pattern, with the same three categories present.
These categories are:
1: Desires. Example: Summoning a friend in a lucid dream. You desired that your friend be present, so they appeared.
2: Fears. Example: When summoning the friend in the previous example, you fear that you lack the skill or the control necessary, and you fail at summoning that friend.
3: Subconscious/Chaos/Unpredictability. Example: All owls in your dream are blue. Your friend wants you to drive them to Georgia because their feet itch.
Obviously, sometimes these categories are insufficient. The subconscious category is the most broad: It covers things influenced by your subconscious, but not necessarily feared or desired, as well as covering things with random or unknown causes and no meaning or bearing on your current mental state. However; through all my experience with lucid dreaming, (Over two years at the time I wrote this) nearly all influences in the dream world can be traced to one of these elements, or a combination of them.
For example, in one particular scene in Alice in Wonderland, Alice is trying to run from the Red Queen, but finds that no matter how fast she runs, she doesn't actually move anywhere. (Often during this tutorial, I will refer to Alice in Wonderland. Mostly, the reason is that it's a very good description of a dream, but it also portrays the three elements of dreaming quite clearly.) Most people experience a similar effect in one dream or another. You try to run from a monster, but you suddenly find yourself paralyzed from the waist down. This is due to a blend of two elements: You desire to escape the monster, or the Red Queen. At the same time, though, you fear that you will not be able to escape the monster/Red Queen. Often times, especially in non-lucid dreams, the fear exaggerates itself to an unnatural level and overcomes the desire. You fear that you won't be able to escape more than you desire to escape.
Now that you're familiar with the three basic elements of dreams, we can move on to the particular element that makes Lucid Dreaming possible.
Confidence.
Several people refer to it as faith, but it means the same thing. If you unquestioningly believe that you are capable of escaping the Red Queen, you will be able to do so. If you have utter confidence that you can fly, you will be able to do so.
Confidence actually plays one of the most important roles in all dreams: Most all blends of the three elements rely to some level on confidence or faith. Back to the Red Queen example. Your desire to escape the Queen can overcome your fear of being unable to escape, but you may still find yourself incapable of moving, simply because of a lack of confidence. If you don't believe that you are capable of escaping, your desire to do so will not be able to manifest itself because your mind essentially roadblocks the possibility that you will be able to outrun the Queen. You don't think you can, therefore you can't.
The Application to Lucid Dreaming
The four aspects of dreaming, three elements governed by one variable, apply to both non-lucid and lucid dreams. Of course, being a lucid dreaming forum, we're more interested in the aspects of lucid dreaming. The means of obtaining a lucid dream are widely varied. Most common are:
DILD- Dream Induced Lucid Dream
(You realize, mid-dream, that you are dreaming. Usually accomplished through a Reality Check [RC])
WILD- Wake Induced Lucid Dream
(The most popular shortcut to lucidity. Difficult to master, but very effective. Basically, you enter directly from an awake state to an REM phase, maintaining consciousness the entire time. Not recommended until you've mastered DILDs and possibly a few other induction methods)
WBTB- Wake Back To Bed
(Very similar to WILD, but with a few differences. See WBTB tutorial for more info.)
MILD- Mnemonic Induced Lucid Dream
(More or less self hypnosis. Usually easier to master than WILD, and a personally recommended beginning point for new LDers looking for an induction method.)
Other methods include:
VILD
FAT
HILD
NST
(More information on each is available in the tutorial section)
For any of the above methods, an important skill to have is Dream Recall.
Steps for Good Dream Recall:
1: Keep a Dream Journal.
Several people use the Dream Journal function here on DreamViews. Its a good function, and I encourage its use, but I'd advise keeping a second, hand-written journal next to your bed. Every morning, stop and write down all the dreams you remember. You don't have to describe them in detail, only key words or feelings that will help you remember the dream on your own. If you have trouble remembering the contents of the dream, write something down anyway. Write impressions that seem strong in your mind, colors, feelings, whatever. Just write it all down until nothing's left. Doing so on a regular basis will increase your capacity for recalling dreams, so in the future you'll remember more.
2: Don't rush to wake up in the morning.
Many of you probably wake up each morning and get up straight away, getting in the shower, going to the bathroom, or grabbing breakfast immediately after waking up. This isn't a good idea for dreaming. To help yourself remember more of your dreams, remain in bed for five minutes or so, meditating and focusing on remembering your dreams. If you don't remember any, relax and focus on the feelings or impressions. Just like with writing in a Dream Journal, focusing on the general concept of a dream will help you remember the actual content. If you have trouble falling asleep again while lying in bed focusing on dreams, sit up in bed and think about it. If you can avoid it, by all means stay away from standing up. It will likely help you remain awake, but at the cost of a significant amount of recall. Once your mind breaks off from the REM phase immediately before you awaken, you're in a delicate stage where the dreams are still in your short term memory. Standing, showering, or excessive movement severs the remaining effects of sleep too quickly and damages the short term memory that survived the end of the REM cycle.
3: If all else fails
One last tip for those who still have difficulty recalling dreams after pursuing the past two tips for at least one week. Setting your alarm clock to wake you up after roughly five hours of sleep will likely help you to remember at least one dream. Some people, once they become adjusted to a certain schedule, always end their sleep far away from an REM cycle. Dream recall is very closely tied to REM cycles—the transition out of REM usually destroys much of your short-term memory. Therefore, if you wake up long after the last REM cycle ended, your short-term memory is very unlikely to remain in tact. Waking yourself up after five hours of sleep should wake you up in the midst of the most REM-dense period of sleep. For some people, this may be off by 30 minutes to 2 hours, though rarely more than that.
Once awakened, write anything you remember about the dream, and go straight back to sleep.
Now that you've built up a good amount of dream recall (Aim for at least one dream a night), you can move on to inducing lucid dreams.
DILD- Dream Induced Lucid Dreams, and How to Have Them.
1: Find Dream Signs. This is why recall is important: Dream Signs are recurring themes or situations common in all your dreams. My most common Dream Sign is jumping—I'll feel an unnatural desire to jump, or I'll be capable of jumping far higher or further than normal. Other dream signs include: Playing a specific video game, meeting a specific person, a certain type of weather, a certain place (schools seem to be common), or specific situations (being naked in public). Almost everyone has at least one Dream Sign, most have more than that. Read through your Dream Journal, and think about past dreams you've had. What do they have in common? How do they differ? Find common themes, and learn to recognize them. When you recognize them in a dream, you'll be able to become lucid.
2: Practice Reality Checks. Commonly referred to as RCs, Reality Checks help establish whether you're really awake, or whether you're dreaming. These are important in conjunction with Dream Signs—When you recognize a Dream Sign, you should perform a Reality Check. Reality Checks are simply what the name implies: Checking to verify whether you're experiencing a dream, or reality. The most commonly mentioned one is attempting to press your index finger through the palm of your other hand. If you can, you're obviously dreaming. Clearly, though, this isn't a fool-proof RC. Sometimes in dreams you won't be able to press your finger through your hand. This links back to the overlying variable in dreaming—Confidence. You must assure yourself that you CAN press your finger through your palm before you can do it in a dream. You must really feel, deep down inside, that it IS possible, because it is just a dream. Once you've done it a few times, it becomes second nature.
There are other, more reliable Reality Checks, though they're often too cumbersome to bother with. One that I often find success with is thinking about the past few minutes. Dreams often inhibit your ability to recall the immediate past, so you won't remember what events led up to the present, and can't clearly define what you're doing and why. Other, popular RCs include:
Plugging your nose and attempting to breath through the closed nostrils
Closing your eyes and attempting to see through your eyelids
Jumping to see if you can fly
Looking at clocks, especially digital ones (Often times the time won't make sense—it will move forward too quickly, or the digits won't make sense. For example, your digital clock could read 7312:22399921.)
Flipping the lights on and off (Similar to clocks, the mind has difficulty representing systems that it doesn't necessarily understand, such as electrical and mechanical devices.)
You should be RC'ing at least three times a day, but you'll likely find more success the more you RC. The general idea is to form a habit, so when you're dreaming your mind subconsciously performs the action, but discovers that it is really dreaming, allowing you to become lucid.
Other Induction Methods:
As I mentioned, there are several kinds of induction methods. Several people wind up developing their own unique method, differing slightly from all others, but it's a good idea to try several different ones to find what works best for you. If you're just beginning, start with DILDs, and once you recall one or more dream each night without fail, and hopefully have had at least two DILDs, you may wish to move on to other methods. First, I'd recommend trying WBTB and MILD. You may not experience success with them, but give each at least five or six tries before abandoning them. After you've tried a few, you may wish to move on to WILD. WILDs are the Holy Grail of Lucid Dreaming- It's a LD almost on demand. Like it was mentioned earlier, WILDs trick the mind into slipping directly from a conscious state into REM, so you stay awake the whole time, but your body, and most of your mind, believes that you're really asleep. It's very difficult to become used to, though. If you do try this technique, be sure to keep working at it two to three times a week for more than a month before deciding it's not for you. You may wish to go on longer than that. I took three weeks of five WILD attempts per week to get my first WILD, and another two months before I was proficient. Most everybody else experiences the same difficulty with the technique—it is virtually unheard of to master it in under one month. There are several existing tutorials on WILDs, though, so I'll leave it to you to read one of those rather than including a very long section on it in this tutorial.
Well, moving on from having lucid dreams, you'll need to control them. This is where the three dream elements come into full perspective.
It's common, even typical, for people to face nightmares, especially recurring ones. More often than not, there's some variation of a dark, shadowy figure that sucks the life out of you/paralyzes you/stops you from running forcibly. Some people even report such dark characters raping them, murdering or torturing them, or killing their loved ones. In Dream Interpretation threads, people go NUTS over these dreams, telling people how it bodes badly in more ways than one.
I beg to differ.
As mentioned earlier, fear is a major component in dreams. If you're worried that your friend will get in a car accident while driving down a dangerous canyon in real life, it will quite possibly carry through into a dream. Such dreams are often the most dreadful sort of fear that people ever face. Partially because its often inescapable, but mostly because it’s a dream within your own mind. You can't hide ANYTHING from yourself, including fears. Dreams play on those fears.
Now, moving on, many people fear the unknown. It stems from the same place that fear of the dark does—you don't know what you can't see. That fear feeds on itself, compounding in power as it manifests itself in your dreams. Once the initial fear manifests itself (fear of the unknown, in the form of a dark figure) things grow exponentially. You begin to fear the figure that has appeared, for more reasons that simply not knowing what it is because of the darkness. You may fear for your safety, or your sanity, or your family's safety. The figure then feeds on this. It can very easily be compared to the Dementors in the Harry Potter novels. The solution to the problem is similar as well:
Ridicule. Laughter. Confidence.
Remember that fear is only one of THREE aspects. Confidence can easily overturn it. This is where lucidity comes into play, though it may take some effort. Every time you're outside at night, do a Reality Check. Every time you're left in a dark room alone, or are scared in any way, do a Reality Check. Nightmares make EXCELLENT Dream Signs. Use them. Most people can, with some practice and experience, turn most nightmares into LDs. Once your lucid, remember that there is no magical force that opposes you. Its just a mirror reflection of your fears. So get rid of them. Nobody sane needs irrational fears. So laugh at it. Flirt with it, if you feel like it. Throw a stick for it to fetch and name it Fido. Do what you will. The important thing to realize is that no matter how terrifying or other-worldly an entity seems to be, its only a figment of the dream."
-Tsen :upsidedown:
