Thread: What was your first deliberate lucid experience?

Just curious what all your first deliberate lucid experiences were like. How did you do it?

I've had a few lucid dreams before, but never had a deliberate one before, any tips?

Hmm honestly speaking I think all of my lucid experiences were deliberate. I suppose that none of my lucid experiences would have ever happened without me intending it to happen. But I remember my first lucid dream very well. I was at school and met a friend from overseas who is not supposed to be at my school so I became lucid and was totally freaked out and hugged her, but before I was able to decide on what to do I lost control and woke up
What about your first experience?

Sounds like quite an interesting first experience.
My first experience was when i was about 8 years old, i had gone into my kitchen and somehow realised i was dreaming. So i then went to my mother and asked her if i was dreaming, she then didn't respond and so i ran out my house and started to shack myself to get out of the dream. That however didn't work. That is all i remember, but it wasnt a very pleasant dream honestly at the time.

15 years old. Stubbornly attempted (and eventually succeeded, though I can't replicate it now) to WILD straight as I went to bed. Found myself in my bedroom and summoned a lovely lady to have sex with. Sadly, the dream ended before it really began. An hour and a half for a 2 minute lucid.

Well if its your first experience that 1 hour and a half would probably be worth it, but i guess if you've been working on lucid for several weeks/months it can get quite frustrating if you haven't had the success you've imagined you'd get after so long.

I was in my house turning the lights on and I realized I was dreaming. So I did a reality check and and I tried flying but I couldn't. Pretty cool to have a lucid dream though.

Was it a semi-lucid dream, seeing that you couldn't fully control your dream?

My first LD was a LaBerge-classical MILD, I had been trying seriously for a month -- at one point after a long and very vivid visually detailed dream, I said to myself "I'm dreaming" and became lucid. It felt like being pulled from the movie theater watching a move into the screen and becoming part of the live action in 3D. I looked around and all the DCs were STARING at me! It blew my mind and made me realize I wanted to be lucid every night. I'm working on that and getting there slowly .

I've been reading up a lot on lucid dreaming lately, including LaBerge book, "Exploring the mind of Lucid Dreaming", and a few people elsewhere have said using the MILD technique is very ineffective as it relies on random chance that you do perform a reality check in the dream. Is it still working for you, or do you use different methods?

I think that whoever says MILD is ineffective as a blanket statement never really read or understood LaBerge.

There is nothing random about combining WBTB, intention setting, and visualization. You are training your brain to lucid dream, aiming for DILDs, and doing new things in the brain take time and repetition for the neural pathways to build and to strengthen.

LaBerge when discussing MILD by no means limits LD training to night-time MILD practice alone. He discusses prospective memory training, WBTB, relaxation, meditation, regular sleep cycles, dream journaling, reflection-intention, reality checks, will training, etc. all during the day to promote lucidity.

I do a lot of those things, still.

There is a common theme I think in people who haven't studied LDing much that think that DILDs are "random" and WILDs "are completely in your control". Just try to WILD a few times to see just how "completely under control" it is . (Summary: WILD is a very delicate balance that takes practice, just like MILD, and benefits from daytime work, just like MILD.)

The really frequent LDers use all approaches, especially DEILD, "the easy WILD."

To answer your question, yes I still use MILD, although mostly during waking hours. I use it from time to time at night, too. My personal focus though is on achieving "all night lucidity" via developing a waking habit of very frequent self-awareness moments and constantly evaluating my location.

Thank you very much for the explanation!
I always evaluate my location as well all the time as part of my reality check. I started doing this after most of my dreams were always in a location I'd never been before, and so its a useful dream sign to lookout for.

Originally Posted by LivinLucid

Thank you very much for the explanation!
I always evaluate my location as well all the time as part of my reality check. I started doing this after most of my dreams were always in a location I'd never been before, and so its a useful dream sign to lookout for.

Yep me too, I rarely visit waking locations in dreams, except for my #1 dream sign which is my childhood home and neighborhood, (which I basically never visit nowadays), so I made a special point of MILDing on those locations that resulted in several LDs when I appeared there . I also have pretty strong sense of dream orientation (I can draw an overhead map of my progress through dream locations, especially lucids), so location awareness is pretty natural for me.

I realized something weird and became lucid. So awareness

I had mine 2 days ago lol, but it went somthing like this:

I where walking past my grandmas house, and i where suddenly home.
After i unequipped my cloathes i sat on the couch. At the couch i took the nose-plug realitycheck and
I realise i where lucid. Then i tried to turn the ligths on. The first time i tried to turn them on
Everything outside became ligth the the secound time i tried the ligths inside turned on but the rom was still dark.
Then i woke up.

It was at a very low level pf lucidity though.

Wow congrats!!! I still have not had a deliberate lucid dream yet, but trying pretty hard! Did you do WBTB?

Originally Posted by LivinLucid

Wow congrats!!! I still have not had a deliberate lucid dream yet, but trying pretty hard! Did you do WBTB?

The best thing you can do is practice WBTB+MILD and build strong expectations during the day. For this, I would recommend a nice RC(I like the look at hand RC because it feels meaningful when I do it) that is meaningful to you and practice it(the RC is the expectation you are building). You don't need to do it 20 times a day, just make sure it is meaningful when you do it, otherwise it will not appear in the dream. I'll be happy to help more. PM me if you like

From my DILD workbook:

I am pretty sure, I had lucid dreams in my childhood. What I remember is that I repeatedly "knew" I was dreaming and when that happened, I used to jump out of windows - esp. our kitchen window of my mother´s/grandmother´s house.
That would give me the momentum, I needed to go flying - it was actually "air-swimming" - so I did it in a later lucid as well.

First time around I gained lucidity later after consciously aiming at it was around me being 20 years old.
I had been reading Castaneda and took it all on face value.
This was not exactly a good thing in my case, since expecting to be in a real danger while in the dream-world followed from it.

I had been telling myself, when I notice I dream, I will look at my hands etc. for about 2 weeks every night before falling asleep.
And then it did work - I fully stabilized* the dream with looking at my hands, till I saw every little detail crystal clear.

This was on different levels one of the most memorable and profound experiences I ever had - finding out, that waking reality as it appears is in no way the only one, that can be fully experienced with all my senses in 3d and fully realistic.
Primarily though - I expected to have switched reality-realms and - as said - was in real danger there eventually.

While pondering this - the scene changed - the walls of a cave which I was exploring for fun with friends suddenly turned to sand and came down from all sides on me.
With all the willpower I could muster, I transferred my consciousness back into my body - just to find, I was literally unable to move or scream - no malignancy hallucinations luckily - I was just afraid to be sucked back to where I had just escaped from.
This was the only time such a thing happened to me.
The whole affair - the nightmarish dream, superstitions, which seemed to be confirmed, and the full on REM Atonia afterwards kept me off trying again for years.
In the meantime I let go of my little and bigger "beliefs" - I would call them superstitions today - and took an agnostic standpoint.

A bit of a letdown - sort of - isn't it just nice to imagine a world of easily reachable real beings of another realm and to believe, one can leave the physical body in form of one's spiritual body and really affect reality?
Well - it´s nice but also scary and I do see no reasons to believe in such. Actually I would want my dreams for myself only anyway now - otherwise - there would be no complete freedom - how sad in a way, to think such.
Instead I hope for first contact with aliens during my lifetime now...lol

*Unfortunately - the three LDs in the further past - before taking it up once more by joining here - were really, really stable and fully realistic all around. Didn't really get there lately - some two or three were pretty good - but this feeling to really completely be in another world - it lacks often - at least to some degree.
But maybe that reddened belief did it - and the following 2 LDs - I expected to be like that from the onset, too.

You can, Steph!
A lot say it is not that the dream was initially vivid, but it depends on how aware you are.
Sageous says that self awareness increases your experience in a LD, and it definetly helps in dream control. Im not sure if he meant increases the vividness too, but more awareness will make the dream more realistic, and more self awareness means we are more aware that we are dreaming. I think, with self awareness, a long WBTB, and Sivason's very effective stabilization techs, you can get a very realistic LD, but I'm not sure.
I found that the long WBTB does the trick, increasing awareness in NLDs thus it becomes more realistic. Then you become lucid, and BAM!! Very realistic LD!
I'm just guessing. I'll start a thread about it.

Yeah - that makes a lot of sense what you say, Louai!
I just recently really amped up my RRCs a là Sageous - more than 10, rather 15-20 per day - and with really doing all senses - hoping for effects through that.

*Moved to General Lucid