Thread: The story of ...

This thread is meant for people to post the story of their oneironaut life. It should be an interesting read. Make it as big as possible. Succes, failures, techniques used, things u found out, ... Anything I'll start

It was the evening of January 4th,2011. I was chilling in my room, browing the app store on my Ipod touch. I came across this Inception app. It said something about controlling dreams. I decided to install it. It turned out to be nothing of interest, but the idea of controlling dreams got to me. I realized I could do anything I wanted in dreams. I used google and came across this epic website. Logged in, read through pretty much everything, and started right away.
I started off by keeping a Dream Journal and doing reality checks. Sure enough, after as little as four days, I had my first LD. I was doing some jedi style fighting when I realized I was dreaming. It lasted quite long, but it wasn't vivid and I couldn't do much. it was still epic though After a minute or 2 the dream stopped thanks to a failed stabilization. Stability would remain a big issue.
I think the next big breakthrough was the thread on ADA by KingYoshi.It came out near the end of March 2011 I believe. I tried it out and it worked right away. It just felt epic and worked wonders for me. I loved and I would use it up to the day of today and probably a lot longer. In the month of July, it gave me SEVENTEEN LD's! I still haven't broken that record (the coming month for sure ).
At one point, I also found out about a certain DEILD method. It has been mentioned multiple times on this forum, it's all in a free ebook my Michael Raduga. That one also worked quite well for me. I still practice it during holidays, as I can sleep longer during those, so I get more opportunities to DEILD. I mainly do it because WILDs are often way more vivid than DILDs. I experienced that myself at one point as well (again not sure when exactly). I woke up, started visualizing (I had read something about visualization on this forum the day before that). Then suddenly I felt the visualization becoming real. Shamefully enough, dream-me didn't know the word 'stabilization' back then, so it ended after a few seconds. It was awfully vivid though.
Lately, as in a few weeks ago, I started a little research on the effects of ADA on memorization. As for the reason why: I've always been able to memorize things quikly and correctly. When I started ADA, it felt very similiar to my way of memorization somehow. I wanted to find out if you can turn that around, in other words: use ADA to learn how to memorize things quikly. The research was quite a succes, but has fallen a bit dead now. If you want to participate, follow the link below this post.
Apart from that I can only really mention the succes I got from a technique that bases itself on confidence (yes I'm speaking of Silverbullet's thread here).
So, as for now: during holidays, I work on the DEILD technique (= Michael Raduga's 'indirect techniques'). During the day (every day: holidays, weekends, normal weekdays,...) I use ADA. In weekend and normal weekdays I also keep a DJ to make my ADA more effective. Perhaps I will start practicing the DEILD in weekends as well, but I guess I'll have to see about that. I also think I found my way out of my issues with stabilization, so that's a good thing. Shame I haven't had a lucid in a while to try it out though Will do that tonight. I will post some links to the threads and techniques mentioned in this story below.

LINKS
All Day Awareness
My research on the link between ADA and memorization
Silverbullet's thread
Michael Raduga's technique (<-- This link is an external one. You can download the ebook for free on the top of the website. He calls it OBE, why he does that becomes apparent in his book. I recommend to read all of it, although you should be focussing on what he calls the 'indirect techniques'. He emphasizes that himself throughout the book enough though )


So... what about you guys? Please post your story below

EDIT: It's also a good idea to add your reason for LDing. My own is that I find the real world too boring. LD is my way to do epic stuff and spice it all up a bit.

Cool story
My brother is one of the lucky people that have discovered lucid dreaming by natural way. I was amazed when he told me about these dreams. Then he found out that dreams like that are called "lucid" dreams. I googled lucid dreams and found this site. I learned a lot about techniques and reality checks. I am not good yet at lucid dreaming, but hey I had 18 lucid dreams, that's better than zero, right?
Anyway, thanks to my brother I started dreaming like that
That's my story

Don't think I can make it big but will give it a try.

I had a lucid nightmare when I was 5, it was basically fighting off demons in a church of spain. When I woke up told family about the amazing dream I just had and how I could "control" it, brother told me that controlling dreams was easy and that I could do it daily if I wanted to, asked him how but all he said was "You have to be aware it is a dream, but before that you have to remember them" and left me on my own; me being a kid, got an obsession with controlling them.

I could remember my dreams no problem, but how would I become aware of it being a dream? Didn't know about RC, methods or anything that I know of today, but even so started trying. All my dreams would start as a FA, so my first try was asking myself if I was dreaming after waking up each time, that went over to the dreams but they would behave like a normal day and couldn't tell the difference. Later on tried to read or feel pain, since I heard people can't do that in dreams, but it was also common for me to go to school in dreams and read the same thing over and over without it changing, not to mention pain was also normal, that didn't work either. Tried so many things while I was at that, breathing while holding my nose, powers, watching shadows, counting time, looking at the sun, the grass, anything that could be done with my normal schedule, but all of them failed, the dreams seemed to mimic them so well that telling them apart for me was impossible.

Many years later, during middle school I had the idea that maybe if I could enter already concious should be able to find something different between a controled dream and a normal one, so started to try and get in a dream first thing in the night. It took several tries but after a night of not sleeping properly, and two+- hours of trying to get asleep concious got it, I was so excited that forgot my goal, this was my first induced controlled dream since I started training 8 years ago! My goal came back when the dream was about to end, I had been running and jumping all around the garden and fighting some aliens, tried to hide from them to think of something, but the dream was about to end... finally I found something, there is always a kind of fog when I start controlling the dream! Not only that, there is also the feeling of being really heavy or really light.

After finding out that, just focused on checking my weight, first had to do it by sitting on my own legs, depriving them from blood and then standing, that way I would remember the weight not only because of the pain but also because I felt heavier at those times, similar to the feel in dreams. When I got that feeling memorized just focused on my weight from the moment I woke up to when I was about to fall asleep, a few months later it moved on to dreams and I managed to control them no problem. Some years later, when I was 16, saw the term "Lucid dreaming" for the first time, searched it and went to several dreaming forums.

Originally Posted by Winamp

Cool story
My brother is one of the lucky people that have discovered lucid dreaming by natural way. I was amazed when he told me about these dreams. Then he found out that dreams like that are called "lucid" dreams. I googled lucid dreams and found this site. I learned a lot about techniques and reality checks. I am not good yet at lucid dreaming, but hey I had 18 lucid dreams, that's better than zero, right?
Anyway, thanks to my brother I started dreaming like that
That's my story

Nice! 18 is a LOT better than zero, that is for sure

Originally Posted by Hukif

Don't think I can make it big but will give it a try.

I had a lucid nightmare when I was 5, it was basically fighting off demons in a church of spain. When I woke up told family about the amazing dream I just had and how I could "control" it, brother told me that controlling dreams was easy and that I could do it daily if I wanted to, asked him how but all he said was "You have to be aware it is a dream, but before that you have to remember them" and left me on my own; me being a kid, got an obsession with controlling them.

I could remember my dreams no problem, but how would I become aware of it being a dream? Didn't know about RC, methods or anything that I know of today, but even so started trying. All my dreams would start as a FA, so my first try was asking myself if I was dreaming after waking up each time, that went over to the dreams but they would behave like a normal day and couldn't tell the difference. Later on tried to read or feel pain, since I heard people can't do that in dreams, but it was also common for me to go to school in dreams and read the same thing over and over without it changing, not to mention pain was also normal, that didn't work either. Tried so many things while I was at that, breathing while holding my nose, powers, watching shadows, counting time, looking at the sun, the grass, anything that could be done with my normal schedule, but all of them failed, the dreams seemed to mimic them so well that telling them apart for me was impossible.

Many years later, during middle school I had the idea that maybe if I could enter already concious should be able to find something different between a controled dream and a normal one, so started to try and get in a dream first thing in the night. It took several tries but after a night of not sleeping properly, and two+- hours of trying to get asleep concious got it, I was so excited that forgot my goal, this was my first induced controlled dream since I started training 8 years ago! My goal came back when the dream was about to end, I had been running and jumping all around the garden and fighting some aliens, tried to hide from them to think of something, but the dream was about to end... finally I found something, there is always a kind of fog when I start controlling the dream! Not only that, there is also the feeling of being really heavy or really light.

After finding out that, just focused on checking my weight, first had to do it by sitting on my own legs, depriving them from blood and then standing, that way I would remember the weight not only because of the pain but also because I felt heavier at those times, similar to the feel in dreams. When I got that feeling memorized just focused on my weight from the moment I woke up to when I was about to fall asleep, a few months later it moved on to dreams and I managed to control them no problem. Some years later, when I was 16, saw the term "Lucid dreaming" for the first time, searched it and went to several dreaming forums.

Nice, and it is actually quite big

I'll try to keep my story short.

Ever since I was young I've been interested in dreams. I was amazed by how real they can seem and how vivid they can be. When I was a kid most (if not all) of my dreams were extremely vivid. Sometimes I couldn't even tell whether something really happened or was just a dream.

I had my first lucid dream when I was around 5 years old. I dreamt I was walking down the street when I suddenly, for no apparent reason, realized I was dreaming. I was amazed that I could actually be aware while dreaming. However, instead of exploring my dream, I decided to wake myself up by repeatedly running head-first into a wall. For the first 18 years of my life this has been the only lucid dream I've had (not counting all those nightmares where suddenly realized I was dreaming and immediately forced myself to wake up), so I thought you just had to be lucky to have one, and never really did any research on it.

Years later, I believe when I was 11 or 12 years old, I had to write a book report for school. I picked a book at random and started to read it. About halfway through the story the main character had an out-of-body experience. The book described how he was able to visit places without physically going there. I thought about what it would be like if something like that would really be possible. However, because it was just a story, I simply assumed it was made up; after all, you can't visit places without actually going there. After writing a crappy report about the book, I returned it to the library. Since then I've never read the book again, nor did I read anything else about out-of-body experiences.

At the end of November 2010, I was suddenly reminded of this book again, especially the part about the out-of-body experience. I didn't really think about it, but for some reason it kept coming back to me during the following days. On December 4th, 2010, I finally decided to do some research on out-of-body experiences. I ended up reading an article about it on Wikipedia, and noticed the term "Lucid dreaming" was also mentioned. At that time I didn't know what lucid dreaming meant, so I decided to read about it. I read about how you can do anything and everything you want without any consequences, as well as how lucid dreaming can help you get rid of phobias. I decided I wanted to learn to be able to lucid dream at will, so I did a little research on it and ended up on DreamViews.

The techniques I've tried so far are DILD, MILD, Puffin's Sporadic Awareness Technique, and Stephen Laberge's Lotus and Flame technique.

As for the things I found out, there's only one thing I can think of right now (even though many people have found this out before I did).
I've often heard people say that if you are not sure whether or not you are dreaming, you should pinch yourself. If you feel pain, you are awake, since you can't feel pain in dreams. I've found out that this is not true. In short, I had a dream where my left hand slowly got crushed, and I felt tremendous pain in my hand. I could still feel it even after waking up. However, the more I woke up, the more the pain went away, so I don't think this pain was caused by something in the real world. When I woke up I wasn't lying on my hand or anything.

On average I have about one lucid dream every three months (I've been slacking way too much), so the only success I can think of is when I had two lucid dreams in one night. In the first one I met a dream guide, who taught me telekinesis and how to summon objects. However, I lost lucidity shortly after he left. In the second one I more or less spent the entire dream thinking about what I should do, even though I've already made a large list of things I want to do in my lucid dreams. I decided to try to summon a dream character. The first try failed, and I think I'll never know whether the second try was actually successful or not. For the second try I decided to have the dream character appear at my front door and ring the doorbell. The doorbell did ring in my dream, however I started worrying about something and woke up before I could open the door.

Originally Posted by Enjyu

I'll try to keep my story short.

Ever since I was young I've been interested in dreams. I was amazed by how real they can seem and how vivid they can be. When I was a kid most (if not all) of my dreams were extremely vivid. Sometimes I couldn't even tell whether something really happened or was just a dream.

I had my first lucid dream when I was around 5 years old. I dreamt I was walking down the street when I suddenly, for no apparent reason, realized I was dreaming. I was amazed that I could actually be aware while dreaming. However, instead of exploring my dream, I decided to wake myself up by repeatedly running head-first into a wall. For the first 18 years of my life this has been the only lucid dream I've had (not counting all those nightmares where suddenly realized I was dreaming and immediately forced myself to wake up), so I thought you just had to be lucky to have one, and never really did any research on it.

Years later, I believe when I was 11 or 12 years old, I had to write a book report for school. I picked a book at random and started to read it. About halfway through the story the main character had an out-of-body experience. The book described how he was able to visit places without physically going there. I thought about what it would be like if something like that would really be possible. However, because it was just a story, I simply assumed it was made up; after all, you can't visit places without actually going there. After writing a crappy report about the book, I returned it to the library. Since then I've never read the book again, nor did I read anything else about out-of-body experiences.

At the end of November 2010, I was suddenly reminded of this book again, especially the part about the out-of-body experience. I didn't really think about it, but for some reason it kept coming back to me during the following days. On December 4th, 2010, I finally decided to do some research on out-of-body experiences. I ended up reading an article about it on Wikipedia, and noticed the term "Lucid dreaming" was also mentioned. At that time I didn't know what lucid dreaming meant, so I decided to read about it. I read about how you can do anything and everything you want without any consequences, as well as how lucid dreaming can help you get rid of phobias. I decided I wanted to learn to be able to lucid dream at will, so I did a little research on it and ended up on DreamViews.

The techniques I've tried so far are DILD, MILD, Puffin's Sporadic Awareness Technique, and Stephen Laberge's Lotus and Flame technique.

As for the things I found out, there's only one thing I can think of right now (even though many people have found this out before I did).
I've often heard people say that if you are not sure whether or not you are dreaming, you should pinch yourself. If you feel pain, you are awake, since you can't feel pain in dreams. I've found out that this is not true. In short, I had a dream where my left hand slowly got crushed, and I felt tremendous pain in my hand. I could still feel it even after waking up. However, the more I woke up, the more the pain went away, so I don't think this pain was caused by something in the real world. When I woke up I wasn't lying on my hand or anything.

On average I have about one lucid dream every three months (I've been slacking way too much), so the only success I can think of is when I had two lucid dreams in one night. In the first one I met a dream guide, who taught me telekinesis and how to summon objects. However, I lost lucidity shortly after he left. In the second one I more or less spent the entire dream thinking about what I should do, even though I've already made a large list of things I want to do in my lucid dreams. I decided to try to summon a dream character. The first try failed, and I think I'll never know whether the second try was actually successful or not. For the second try I decided to have the dream character appear at my front door and ring the doorbell. The doorbell did ring in my dream, however I started worrying about something and woke up before I could open the door.

Good story! And, completely off-topic, nice avatar! I love Code Geass

Originally Posted by Spyguy

Good story! And, completely off-topic, nice avatar! I love Code Geass

Thanks, dude! I like your avatar too. I'm a big fan of Naruto as well.

To get back on topic: I just realized I forgot to mention my reasons for lucid dreaming.

Like most people here on DreamViews, what initially got me interested in lucid dreaming was the ability to do anything you want to do, with no limits, and no consequences. The dream world can be as realistic as the real world, and as long as you can imagine something, it is possible. You can even use all of your senses in a dream; you can feel or smell something even though it does not physically exist. Though this is still what interests me the most about lucid dreaming, I also have a few other reasons for practising lucid dreaming.

You could say that one of the main reasons why I practise lucid dreaming is escapism. I don't like the world we live in, so I create my own world. A world where you don't get shot just for greeting someone, or killed because you don't believe in the same god as others. Or one where you don't go outside just to find your cat being shot through his head. (These are just a few examples; but I'll try to keep this post short.)

Another main reason for me to practise lucid dreaming is getting rid of phobias. For example, when I was young I used to love spiders. I would always go outside to catch them and keep them as pets. Now I'm arachnophobic. I tried getting rid of this arachnophobia once using self-hypnosis. Though it did work for a week or two, it eventually got back, much worse than before. Lucid dreaming provides me with a way to get rid of this in a more natural way.

There are some more reasons why I practise lucid dreaming, but they are small and relatively unimportant compared to the ones I mentioned above.

I've been a natural sporadic lucid dreamer since I was little, but I never really thought of the possibilities. Just "Hey cool, I'm dreaming!" and that was usually the end of it XD

Until recently:
It was a Sunday morning, and I had just awoken from a Lucid Dream. I remembered my friend used to be obsessed with dreams and lucid dreams, and used me as a guinea pig for her dream experiments. I happily complied. So now it had caught my attention again, so I went onto Mr Google (he knows everything), and was directed to this lovely site.

I read about Dream Journals, and decided to keep one. I was scared of the Hypnagogia though, to the point where I was afraid to go to sleep, so I only had one DILD for months Then I just happened to wake up in the middle of the night, went to pee, and went back to bed. My first successful WBTB. I then went into SP, had mild HH and had my first induced LD. I did the hand-check reality check, and instead of 5 fingers, my right hand displayed 6 toes. I was amused by this, not freaked out like my mum when I told her the day after hahaha.

So I figured it wasn't so bad, but still I felt afraid. Until it happened again. The dream got more vivid, and I had more control. Also, I flew for the very first time EVER in a dream. Well, more like floating. I actually went somewhere, remembered my deal with Nito (call each other out in a lucid dream), so I called his name a few times but he didn't show up. I got annoyed at this point, because I once succesfully summoned Capt Jack Sparrow (the character, not Johnny Depp the actor) in a LD (yyeeeeeaaars ago).

Time passed without LDs, but with lots of dreams remembered per night, which I also thought was progress.

Then last night I woke up in the middle of the night again, and consciously decided to do a WILD. My first consciously induced WILD. I let the SP-induced vibration waves wash over me (3 in total) and when no more seemed to come, I got up and I was in the dream. I managed to float again, now flying properly. I talked to DCs, while fully aware that they were DCs. But still I couldn't call anyone out!!

My friend Ophelia thinks I was able to summon Jack Sparrow because he's fictional, as opposed to Nito who is a real person. ..presumably So, that being said, I'm going to summon Lucius Malfoy (from the Harry Potter books/films), since that's a fictional character too..