Success and How I Did It.
Until now, I've not had anything to contribute, but now I do, so here it is:
I've been struggling for about a year, during which time I managed to have two lucid dreams. Both of which I woke up from immediately upon realizing that I was dreaming. Pretty frustrating overall. However, giving up never entered my mind.
About two weeks ago, I stumbled onto a book by Carlos Castaneda call 'Magical Passes.' I got it from my local library. But Amazon's got it if your library doesn't. Anyway, in this book Castaneda describes these movements which are simple to do and are supposed to bring you to higher states of awareness. There is one small section devoted to dreaming. Once the order of the movements is memorized, they can be done in little more than a minute.
The first time I tried them, that night I had several vivid dreams. Nothing lucid, but still much more vivid than what I'm used to. Plus, I rarely remember more than one dream a night, but that night I remembered four dreams. It looked like I was onto something here.
For two weeks, I've been practicing these movements, and remembering my dreams pretty consistently now. Unfortunately, still no lucidity (lucidness?).
Then, the other day, I found a book by Arnold Mindell called 'Dreaming While Awake.' I read the whole thing and while I don't pretend to understand the concept of dreaming 24 hours a day, a few of his mind-exercises looked interesting. So yesterday, as per usual, I did my Castaneda movements, and while drifting off to sleep, I did this Mindell exercise dealing with time travel. The result? Last night I had two lucid dreams. Perhaps more, but I can't remember. And not only were they lucid, but they didn't end when I realized I was dreaming. But they went on for several minutes. To say that I'm jazzed is quite an understatement. A whole new world has been found for me to explore, and I can't wait to get started.
