Thread: My first lucid dream and how i attained lucidity

Well, first of all, congrats

And even if you didn't get a chance to do the RC in a dream, I can assure you, that you got your lucid dream because of them. More precisely, because of your feelings you put into practicing RCs. The hightened awareness you had when RCing. Even if you didn't actively practice awareness, there was some thought and intent in the back of your mind.

Congratulations on your very first lucid dream! This is a milestone. Soon you'll be having many, many more!

Like gab said, though, RCs aren't entirely useless. Your subconscious mind would have put all of the practicing that you did into good use. In my experience I've never had to do a reality check in a dream once I've become conscious because I know that I'm dreaming (actually it's because I get way too excited way too quickly . . .), but I have managed to stop and try to stabilize the dream at least once. I guess what I'm trying to say is whatever you've been doing to practice lucid dreaming up to this point, don't stop; that includes RCs. If you stop then there's a chance you won't have another LD for quite awhile. . . .

Well i stopped doing RC's for like a week, but i was ALWAYS thinking about LDing, so that may be the reason.

Thinking about LDing can definitely help your chances. Try not to fall behind on your RCs though! If you do them properly (properly questioning your surroundings, heightening your awareness, stopping what you're doing, really thinking about it) then you will have more and more Lucid Dreams.

In a dream, you tend to become lucid before you RC, something makes you question your dream, this comes from the higher awareness that you'll have.

Congratulations, keep it up!

Originally Posted by Scoutz

Well i stopped doing RC's for like a week, but i was ALWAYS thinking about LDing

I promise I'm not trying to "diss" realdealmagic because what he says about RCs are important, but I'm just going to give some feedback on the other side. . . .

If you had a lucid dream only after stopping reality checks, then that could mean a number of things: 1) you were spending way too much time trying to prepare for lucid dreaming and so your subconscious rejected the concept; 2) you hate RCs; 3) RCs simply do not work for you.

The best way to get lucid dreams is to experiment. Tutorials and the like are great and helpful and you should read them when you're thinking about trying another technique, but just because a particular tutorial says something usually works doesn't mean that it will usually work for you. Generally speaking people have great luck with reality checks--but I don't. The only RCs that I find useful are my own, and you might be the same way. My suggestion to you is to spend from now until August 30 completely avoiding reality checks. Just think about lucidity. If you have a dream journal and you have been writing in it, then keep doing that as well. Don't go to any new techniques--just stick with DILD. Don't even do a WBTB. Doing any of these things might give you false information about how your brain works.

Once the month is up and if you have had more lucid dreams (even if it's just one) then you've found at least one thing that will help you achieve consciousness, and by then you can start experimenting with more techniques. However, if the month comes to a close and you haven't had any more, it's possible that only thinking about lucidity can't get you anywhere.

If that's what happens then I think you should do two things. The first of which is to go back to doing what you were doing before you had the lucid dream. So let's say you kept executing reality checks for two weeks before you went off of it; do that again, and then once two weeks are up stop. If you have a lucid dream then try something a bit different: half the time you do RCs (which, if you had done two weeks to start with you would do one week this time) and then stop for another week. I recommend trying to do this twice because there's a chance that if you achieve or don't achieve lucidity, it's just a coincidence here. If both times you don't have another LD then assume that your original RC'ing schedule is the way to go for you--and if you do become lucid, then you might want to keep this up. You can even keep shortening the time if you wish, but just remember that however long you were doing reality checks--there might be something to that.

Once you're done with your experimentations on RCs it might be good to start looking at other things outside of DILD, such as CAT or even subliminal messages. Anything might be the thing for you!

CNGB, you may have a point about the whole trying other techniques, but the whole point of RCs is to raise awareness. Assuming they're being done correctly, you will raise your awareness before you do an RC, and sometimes get lucid from that rather than the action of the RC itself. They are affirmations of suspicion. Telling the OP to just stop them altogether is a silly idea I think, because they are better for more than just checking that you're dreaming, they help to raise your awareness, which helps to increase dream clarity, stabilisation, and various other things.

Starting and stopping a technique regularly is a bad idea as well, I think, because the whole point of doing a technique and practicing it constantly for a certain period of time, is to drill it into your head. Practicing a technique on/off would get confusing.

There is also a high chance that Scoutz' practicing was just kicking in and his practice of awareness through Reality Checks was starting to work on its own. The delay wouldn't create too much of a barrier, I don't think.

Congrats on the first lucid dream!
I agree with gab and RDM, you have gained awareness in first place with reality checks and even after stopping doing them you were more aware than normally, so don"t stop them entirely. Though, if you don't like the physical action itself, the action itself isn't important, there are reality checks that can be done purely mentally, like changing objects, for example you can look at something, like, a tree, and think something like "If this was a dream, this tree would be different color." and expect it to change. Check out this thread too: http://www.dreamviews.com/dild/13212...ods-dilds.html