Okay so I've been trying lucid dreaming for a couple of months now but only just recently had any real success. I started seriously trying this technique just yesterday and on my first day of using it got a lucid dream, used it again last night and got an even more vivid and stable lucid dream. I will explain what I have done up until this point and what I did differently last night and the night before and you can make up your own mind or perhaps even give me a little insight. I'm actually not even sure if it's a WILD technique or a DILD technique but it's a combination of the two I guess?
Firstly I keep a dream journal, I actually have a nice big book that I write in but that's more for writing dreams in a report-like format the morning after. I live with my girlfriend who I don't want to disturb so I can't use a voice recorder or a lamp in the middle of the night, but what I do is I have a little black notebook that I use to write down keywords and ideas directly after I wake up from a dream.
Up until yesterday I would write down the details, start to fall back asleep and then remember something that I missed, a detail, a character, and I would wake my self up from borderline sleep and write it down. Well I stopped doing that because I think it's interrupting me from having lucid dreams. I can't explain why I think that but it's just a feeling.
The details that I remember initially while being awake I'll write, but I won't go out of my way once I've recorded them the first time. I don't remember why I decided to do this but so far it's helped. I'm having less different dream "episodes" but they're becoming more lucid, vivid, and controllable since I stopped going back and trying to fill in more. The way that I would try to explain this is that the extra details that you remember have the potential to launch you into another dream, but since they aren't actually part of that dream, they are part of another dream, they will create inconsistencies in the new dream world and you will notice these inconsistencies and become lucid. That's my theory anyway.
The other thing I've been doing differently is thinking to myself as I'm falling asleep, "Lucidity x 1000, Stabilization x 1000, Vividness x 1000" and then I count myself to sleep.
One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand. The idea here is to create a thought pattern "one thousand" which you associate with the words, and then remember it on occasion while you're sleeping. The night before last I had trouble getting to sleep so I actually got all the way to 1000 1000, but the same night I also became what I would consider fully lucid. It didn't last more than a minute in dream time but it was enough to make me think that something that I did differently had an effect. I tried the same method last night and had another even more stable lucid dream, which was the result of a false awakening and reality check and lasted a few minutes longer than the night before.
It sure is weird to discover you have extra fingers.
Anyway would love to hear what you pro's think, I'm just a newbie but this is what has worked for me.
Dream on!
IG
