How to take the pressure off lucid dreaming

Hey Everybody, some of you know me, some of you don't. I've been on here for a while, and when I started LDing for the first time, I had no dream recall, and thus didn't know if I had LDs or not. My diet was horrible, everything in my life was chaos pretty much. Now, I've come a long way. Ive had over 60 lucid dreams, and any time I feel the need to have one, or a question answered in my dreams, it comes. And I wanted to pass on some truths about this that I have found. I am always very careful about what I say when it comes to the matter of truth, because it influences people so profoundly. I just want to explain THIS IS NOT A TECHNIQUE, but rather an understanding of how you should carry yourself when it comes to lucid dreaming, and dream recall, etc.

First, you have to want it. You have to have some sort of desire towards the subject of remembering your dreams, and knowing you are dreaming while dreaming. This is the first ingredient. Without desire, you'll get nowhere fast. If you don't have a strong desire, make one! Envision how awesome it would feel while knowing you are dreaming in the dream, or how awesome itll be remembering a kick ass dream. Read some super cool dream journals, or experiences online to sort of cultivate this desire. Affirm to yourself that you want to remember your dreams, know this, feel this desire. It is very important.

Second, drop the instant gratification ideals. The worst thing that can happen is that you want a lucid dream, never had them before, and then have one really good one, and then they stop. Because in most people, this will generate a block towards lucid dreaming, because they will begin to analyze everything they did the previous day to try and replicate it to replicate the experience...when it resulted from beginners luck, not any induction from the days activities. There is of course more to this, but the general idea is- drop the instant gratification, and accept long term gratification. It is the only thing that will stick with you, and give you the results you truly want/desire(which ties into the First thing, see how interwoven this all is).

Third, accept that you don't know much about lucid dreaming, and dream recall, and you wont ever know everything that goes on- and this is part of the point. You have to have faith that it works, and will work for you. This involves a lot of right brain activity, and this is also key, because this is where a lot of the power to dream comes in.

Fourth, and I wish someone told me this...Any thought that comes up that is not positive towards your growth in this area is incorrect, and should be annihilated. For example, When I was beginning this, I had a constant negative feedback thought stating in my head "You aren't supposed to control your dreams, because this would take away from dream meaning". At the time, I strongly associated lucidity(knowing its a dream while in it) with control, and this formed a HUGE block to me becoming lucid for long periods of time, because I thought I might be messing with my head in a bad way, at a subconscious level. So negative feedback should be ignored. Rather, if the thought is more like "Be aware of the details when you are lucid, as it will speak to you in different manners than when you aren't lucid", or "The dream tells you even more while you are lucid", that is positive feedback, which is essential to generating confidence, which is also essential. And when you have these positive thoughts, replay them as many times as you want inside your head, loudly, with force. So, out with the negative bullshit that either your mind, or another is making up, and is false, and in with the positive feedback. No inner , or outer guru, or conscience is going to phrase things in a negative fashion, as this distorts the meaning behind the words.

Fifth- Confidence. OMG, this is essential. Essential, essential, essential.
How to Gain Confidence | eHow.com
Funny, this guy explains how to gain confidence much better than I could. I didn't start remembering my dreams daily until I started to initiate my confidence in remembering them the night before. Now its simple, easy, and when I involve my dream journal, after 2 days I get a huge jump in recall from 2-4 dreams per night remembered without a dream journal, to about 5-7, detailed with dream journal. I even remember dreams when I'm sick now, something I never was capable, and it stems from having confidence.

6th- Any time a person says something negative about lucid dreaming, whether verbal, auditory, or contextual, supplement it inside your mind with a positive thought, directly opposing to the negative one, as this will annihilate the negative one. Keep thinking the positive one until thats all you are left with. Trying to counteract a negative thought with another negative one only works when the negative one you think to counteract the first negative one has a positive spin on it. Other wise, its just adding fuel to the fire. Supplementing a positive thought will also eliminate the information processing virus that causes you to form a mental block from the negative one. There truly is only positive things about knowing it is a dream while you are dreaming, it gives you more options, and your brain is infinitely capable of using those options to convey any meaning towards you. Your brain adapts to any dream environment to utilize it to convey meaning through symbols. Any limiting thoughts contrary to this should be thrown in the garbage with the rest of the limiting thoughts.

7th- This is a dream. For the first couple weeks, when you begin to get serious, go outside, in a place away from everything, and state to your environment, this is a dream. If you are around a tree, state aloud, that is a dream tree, and know it inside your mind. Feel the dreamlike state of reality around you. Reality is a dream. The body you possess right now is a completely temporary body, it will be gone from your location in 7 years, all the atoms substituted for another. Know this, don't think it, feel the dream, and know it is a dream. Doing this in reality is the first step to doing it in the dream. Once you begin to do it daily in the dream state, you can stop doing it in reality, as then you will feel the difference. First, do this for about 30 minutes every day for a couple weeks. It will cause a dramatic shift in your awareness, and allow for it to be activated in your dreams. Its kind of like a primer on the engine.

8th- Detailed perception. If you want to remember your dreams more, practice for a day looking at the details of everything. This REALLY helps for some reason. Look at a leaf, and look at all the bumps, and ridges, the color variations. Notice, observe, write down all that you see. See the dots on a "e" on a paper page. Just see the details of everything. This will cause your mind to look for it while dreaming, and increase the amount of stuff in your dream, making it more memorable.

9th- Taking the pressure off. Once you take the pressure off from lucid dreaming, then you can begin to focus on it without it being a block. Also, know its easy. It is, very easy. It is easier than saying, this is a dream, and feeling the dream around you right now. So if you can do that, your golden.:banana:

And thats about it. See, no technique, just some tips, some suggestions to ease your way into lucidity. It will take time, but, with determination, you will get there. This is basically a guide to transforming distress into eustress. While it is easy, it still takes effort to do, but the right effort, with the right understandings gives much better results. If you want to get the most out of this, see, hear, feel what I am saying in your own words, and you will be lightyears ahead then when I was. There is much more, but these are the truths that I have found to be true, without any techniques. Techniques are just a means to an end, and these understandings can be carried with any technique.

Very good post, I agree with what you've written. Your second point is especially helpful. :thumbup:

Thanks for writing this :)

Your welcome! Another important thing I should write, is consistency of practice. Just like when you miss a day learning to ride a bike, you drop in terms of ability to ride, same with LDing. We expect too much out of our efforts which are not grounded in reality. Their are no limits to your achievements in what you can accomplish with regards to lucid dreaming, because you tap into such vast energy pools, however, you need to have some sort of ritual that you use(technique) to get to this state of being. Of course, that is an objective explanation to a subjective experience, so imagine what I'm writing, and this will help generate the correct neuronal connections(fancy pants lingo for correct subconscious understanding for a foundation for your conscious mind to support itself on).

Because the brain cannot distinguish between whats imagined and whats real, if you imagine that its a dream, in whatever environment is being projected to your brain( internally generated, like a visualization, or externally generated, like a tv show, or reality in general) then you are doing the same thing as if you were in a dream, experiencing that state of lucidity(knowing its a dream while in a dream). This last sentence is an explanation for a technique that the Tibetan Buddhist monks use, the whole "this is a dream" concept-pointing to reality. However, you can make your own technique. For example, you could watch tv, and state every now and then, like the annoying commercials, in a sing song voice, that is a controlled dream, and I know this, pointing to the television. You could do this aloud(more powerful), or inside your mind. Remember to initiate that gnostic feeling process as well. Or you could do it at any time, maybe common experiences you have. The point is again, the understanding behind the technique.

And of course, consistency of practice. I beg you to disregard what I've written here in terms of technique, as they are not self-generated(internally generated), make your own through trial and error based off the understandings I've relayed, and others technique, as that will be much more effective. If anyone sees anything that may be a little off, or a little confusing, let me know, and I will re-define what I mean where necessary.

I really enjoyed this! :)
I've been on and off, I always lose confidence after I don't have a lucid for a few weeks. This is just what I needed, great advice - thanks.

Hey yuppie11975, let me know if it helps, and which point helped you the most! And your welcome!

Hey! I'm new to the forum and lucid dreaming (sortof) but I wandered across your post and just wanted to say it all sounds very reasonable and helpful. So thanks for posting! Your points seem to suggest many traps I could have fallen into and learned the hard way but now, hopefully, I won't have to. I definitely plan on implementing them into my lucid dreaming exercises. You could probably turn this into a very useful guide to the Lucid Dreaming mindset :)

Thanks again!

I agree with everything except your third point. I have faith that it works because it's been proven to do so, but seems counteractive to learning to assume we'll never figure it all out? I'm mainly just interested in why things happen.

I love this. Thank you. More positive 'You can do anything' articles. Thank you thank you thank you. ♥

Thanks for the confidence boost, this really helped!

Thanks for posting this ^.^
I feel that these tips will definitely help me and others :P