HI! I am sorry to announce that I am leaving DV. I don’t know if or when I will come back. I will be keeping up with a couple of places, so if you see me post in the dream control and stabilization class, then don’t think that I am back. I also will answer PMs maybe. If I feel like it really. Mainly if people read this stuff and then message me.
Basically… I am getting selfish in my time. I think that I can LD better if I leave for now. There are a lot of reasons as to why, but you probably don’t care about that. So… posting that more at the bottom.

This is basically a mega thread of all sorts of awesome things around DV. Lots of threads that I like to link, basically a “Sensei in a box” if you will. Because even though I am selfish about this now, I am not selfish enough to not try one last thing to try and help people LD.

Not all of these are Podcasts, I shall label them with “PODCAST” So that you know if you feel like listening or reading. I shall also label things “My Threads:” or “others threads:” because I feel like a lot of things I had planned on writing came to a head because there is a bunch of AMAZING THINGS ON DV!!!

First thread you should Read
My Threads:
http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...s-secrets.html

First thread you should listen to:
My Threads:
http://www.dreamviews.com/dreamviews...e-told-me.htmlPODCAST


When you have some spare time
My Threads:
http://www.dreamviews.com/dreamviews...ng-sensei.htmlPODCAST

http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...ramblings.html


Dream Control and Stabilization
http://www.dreamviews.com/dreamviews...m-control.htmlPODCAST

http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-cont...esson-1-a.html

http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-cont...esson-2-a.html

http://www.dreamviews.com/dreamviews...ilization.htmlPODCAST

Others Threads:
The Nature of Dream Control

A Unifying Theory of Dream Control - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

My Tutorial for extending Lucid Dream Time. Hours of LD. - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Dream Journal and Recall
My Threads:

http://www.dreamviews.com/dreamviews...am-recall.htmlPODCAST

http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-sign...m-journal.html

http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-sign...cro-wbtbs.html

http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-cont...our-goals.html

Others Threads:
http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-sign...ompendium.html

Attaining lucidity (The top two definitely belong here as well)
http://www.dreamviews.com/dreamviews...technique.htmlPODCAST

http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...important.html

RCs
http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...ity-check.html

DILD
http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...technique.html
http://www.dreamviews.com/induction-...d-secrets.html

WILD
Mzzkcs Comprehensive WILD Guide - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views
Mzzkcs Comprehensive WILD Guide - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Full Guides by People that Actually LD
http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...cid-dream.html
http://www.dreamviews.com/wild/12557...mentals-q.html
http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...day-night.html
http://www.dreamviews.com/education-...like-king.html


So that is it for the “Directly pertaining to lucidity threads”, but I still have links and lots of things to “needlessly put inside quotations”. These are still things to do with lucidity though, so I wouldn’t recommend just skipping it. These also come with stories and all, so yeah… that.

Something that needs to be addressed is that Sleep Paralysis should generally be ignored, here are some threads that talk about the whole idea of SP
Sleep Paralysis
http://www.dreamviews.com/wake-initi...mystified.html
http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-yoga...explained.html

When I first started LDing. I realized that I could do anything in the 10 minutes of LDing, or even an hour of LDing, but that didn’t seem like enough. I had amazing LDs, but still it wasn’t… good enough. It wasn’t worth all of the waiting and the practice to lucid dream. Then I saw this thread:
http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...other-dcs.html

Ok… so that is one bloody long thread, but the first post and the last few posts should give you an idea of what is going on. Here is his fully revised and reorganized idea of how he thinks that things can be persistent.
Persistent realms and other lucid dreaming techniques I use. - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

I read this and I was shocked. I could make things persistent. I then got rejuvenated and kept reading all on DV for cool and awesome things. I went through the TOTM and TOTYs (I have read almost every post in all of those by the way, at least the gist of them). I used it as a way to find incredible dreamers and find their stories. I went back ages and ages into DVs past and found wonderful threads and people. I know this sounds like a lot of reading and you can't be bothered to read that much, but I recommend (if you plan on learning things in life) to learn how to speed read, the book "remember everything you read" by Evelyn Wood is a good start. There are new versions of it, but by googling that, you should find it. It should take only a few hours to read and double your reading speed easily, as well as increase it to beyond that if you practice. If you are having trouble searching for good threads, find a good dreamer, go to their "latest started threads" and search around. Keep in mind that they do not like necro posting here, so check the thread before posting on it.
I found this amazing TOTY:
http://www.dreamviews.com/tasks-mont...ar-2012-a.html

The whole TOTY in one week. a-freaking-mazing. I couldn't even believe it when I read it. I had to know more. I read all of his started threads and then checked through places that he posted a lot. Read his DV journal and then googled him and found out more (can't link obviously, but he also took down a lot of his threads in other places, so it is kind of a waste of time right now). I joined a competition and there he was... just decided to join the comp as a way of saying farewell to DV.
http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...ml#post1977834

The competition changed a lot since I first joined and started it. Back then there were a lot of a lot of limits. Due to the limitless nature of LDing, I thought that the dream competition should reflect that and have changed many rules. So when you see his score, it might not impress you. But then last competition I did something... I made a little sheet with "LD amounts" on it and checked it. For the 2 week competition, I had 22 (1.57 a night), Percy had 29 (2.07 a night), dreamer had 34 (2.43 a night). I decided that for context, I should look at my mentors numbers... he had 96 Lucid dreams (6.86 a night) in two weeks. no DEILDs, just WILD and DILD. This was a normal thing for him. I read his DJ (Which is mostly gone now) and recognized something similar to Hyu a persistent world and all that great JAZZ. But he had expanded on that soooooo much. I PMed him every day for about a year. We talked about LDing, control, everything.
Here is a thread another friend of his made about Hukif's technique:
http://www.dreamviews.com/induction-...-tutorial.html
I had other mentors, but hukif definitely helped me the most and the longest. With a new child on the way I kind of lost touch and haven't talked to him in a while, but he is still LDing like a boss (I am friends with a friend of his). His story and his help changed me quite a bit!
Now, I have met a lot of people with LDing. I traveled to different forums and everything, just to get to know LDers, but my friends have really always been here at DV. Some didn't make it long (like rhill1991), some made it a while and I hope to reconnect (like dutchraptor), some were just crazy fun to hang out with and I have become friends with them (Like Fryingman and many many others), which even if I lose touch, I will always count them as a friend, because friends do seem to come and go, but the bonds that we make are always there, sometimes they just get hidden by time and age, unless intentionally severed. I have had so much fun with all of you, and I hope to keep in touch with a lot of you. If you consider me a friend, feel free to PM and I will send you my Skype name. I am not really taking an initiative in this, because as I said, selfish leave from DV.

Now more to the threads and stories.
Incubation is a weird subject. I have to type a lot about this. I started when I was 16, just putting cool things like "the force" (telekinesis), fire, rasengan, melchee's door, and many more into my dreams. The way I did this is pretty basic, but it takes time. Believe that you can do it and do self affirmations through the day that you can use fire. Then it will just appear in your dreams, since your mind puts things in your dreams from what it thinks waking is like.





The faster way to incubate is through obsession. You have all had a dream about that video game or girl that you are obsessed with. This kind of takes it to a new level. I want that thing that you want to dream about to be the first thing that pops into your mind when it wanders. If you are prone to imagining, even when not trying to, then when you close your eyes, I want you to see that thing. That is how obsessed. If it is star wars you want in your dreams, then read books, watch movies, play games, and think... star wars. It will happen.
The other thing usually left out about incubation is dream recall. The better the dream recall, the more easily it is to change what you are dreaming about since your waking and sleeping mind seem more connected as well as being able to remember dreams that you did have that thing in it. If you only remember one 10 minute sequence, you are missing a good 90% (at least) of REM dreams, and that isn't even mentioning NREM dreams.
Incubation and induction can be very closely in tune. Here is a thread talking about it. You will notice that Oreoboy1996 signed off on it, that is Oreo for those unawares.
http://www.dreamviews.com/general-dr...-tutorial.html
Now if you cross your eyes when looking at RCs and mantras, you will see that they are quite similar. Doing something through the day that you hope happens in a dream. Lots of people say "that means that you aren't doing it right!" because they think that you don't want to just have an RC in the dream, but that is false. You are raising your state awareness (if you don't know about my dual awareness idea, then you need to check out my threads more before getting to this point) and hoping it is going to happen in a dream.
Ok, so I will put the simplest way I can of what I think about attaining lucidity.
If you have a high enough presence in a dream, then the word dream just needs to pass through your head and you will realize that it is a dream.
That is simply the two awarenesses path that I have chosen. I have seen many others that seem to be similar, but rely more on other things and ideas. This is what makes sense to me.

For those that are looking for interesting threads and people
You might be looking for max's Advanced lucid dreaming threads
Advanced Lucid Dreaming (lucidmax)

Or you might be looking for more of a crazy method that naturals have used
http://www.dreamviews.com/induction-...al-method.html
http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...-tutorial.html

If you have trouble concentrating or anything, I recommend this for a new and amazing hobby.
Dream Yoga

I think that it is funny that it is all condensed into this. I actually started on YouTube with finding people like giz, but that didn't help much. DV has been my home and my family, but certain things have come up that have made it a necessity for me to leave. If you don't care about me, it might just sound like a weird rant, but I actually think that this is something that every lucid dreamer should read. If I could put it into my "When I blah blah blah" thread, I would.
Lucid Dreaming sure is lonely.
I may have mentioned this in that thread, but I didn't go into enough depth. I think that LDing needs to be a lone sport. I am not saying that you need to leave the forum. I am just saying that one of the things that naturals have that we do not, is lucid dreaming alone. They usually develop by themselves, and I think that LDing thrives when you embrace the unknown, the nothing, the everything. I think that better people than I could stay and just enjoy teaching without my LDing being dependant upon others, but I cannot.
I had a dream the other day. I was in a forest and I was talking to a DC. It was beautiful and calming and I was getting ready to banish the DC and just spend some time alone, but a thought occured to me. I am going to share this on DV, so I should accomplish a goal, a task, something to show others how awesome LDing is. I tried something and it ended up being kind of cool, but not extremely. I wish I would have just stayed in that forest for longer, just enjoying my dream. For me, this means that I need to LD purely for myself. My dream goals need to be purely my own. I can't care about what anyone else is doing.
My end goal stays the same
To spend every night lucid, doing whatever I want without breaking awareness
In explanation, I want my night to just flow without a break of awareness. If it is a DILD, I become lucid right at the beginning of a dream and know my goals if I have any.
I have pretended to have that goal, but my goal has been more to "pass up this person" or to "have as good of dream memory as so and so". My goal is pure awareness, and I keep losing sight of it. I am not putting a time limit on this and I am going to be putting my lucid dreams into a paper DJ. If I come back, I will post it here. I do plan to come back, but only after achieving my goal, or coming to the conclusion that I will not be sidetracked. I think that competition has helped me, but it has lost its place in my studies. I do not regret any of them or any path I have gone down and failed, because I think that it is what brought me here.

If you are struggling with lucid dreaming, I cannot say that it is worth it, but I can say this. I spent 45 days trying to get one lucid dream. Then I started keeping track of how often they came, then they seemed to stop increasing. I kept changing and changing to increase LDs. I was so frustrated so many nights, but I have kind of been looking forward to a day that my LDs were the same as the amount of days trying to LD. I am almost there, and now I don't care. I am not one to say that LD count doesn't matter, because the number 1000 drove me for a long time and helped me get here sooner. But now... I know I will keep having LDs. It is kind of a weird change that happened recently. I can LD... I know more will come... If I ruin one night (like by writing this), I know I may still have a lucid dream.
Lets say that Lding never ever gets old (I mean that). When you first hear about it, you are skeptical "Never gets old? Impossible!" you say with your doubting eyes "Everything gets old" But still you must try it, because it sounds like it will be fun to try at least for a while. You finally get a lucid dream after a while of trying and you are so excited. Then you realize that you can only get it at specific times. You try to make those times appear, and it really doesn't get old. Then after a thousand times, it still isn't old, but the "need to have it now" is gone. It can be gone in one of two ways
1) I love it so much, but I don't need to worry, because I am good enough that I know I will have them again, and even though my goal is higher, I won't worry. There is absolutely no stress or worry or wait for LDing, because I can guess almost every time I will have one. having a lucid dream is just... not something to worry about, but still something to increase.
2) You get complacent and start losing your ability, because you don't have that drive.

So what I am saying is that the worry and stress is gone after a while, but if you do it right, you should be able to still have the drive for more. I think that a lot of people hit this sooner than I did, but we all learn everything at different paces, even if it is a facet of the same thing. haha.

DOWN
This may seem weird, but it is something that I am looking into. It is a definition of exactly where the dream seems to be. I feel like people that have a clear definition of the dream world in their mind have an easier time lucid dreaming. This may be why we see a lot of “beginners luck” and things like that. In my mind, it seems like the dream world is “down” in my own head, I know that this is partially true, but also doubt it all the time. Sometimes when I wake in the night I feel like all I have to do is go to sleep and head down. The lack of memory of those doubts makes it so that I just slip into dreams like it is the easiest thing ever. This is why I call my dream control thread "The Depths" because that is where I am headed.

It explains why when we are told as a kid “Don’t be afraid of nightmares, the next time it happens, just wake yourself up” you do it. No questions asked. Because you simply believe that it is that simple. Simplifying the problem. Instead of what we start with as kids, a simple
2 + 2 = 4.
We complicate it and it starts looking more like
integrate sin x dx from x=0 to pi

When I first started LDing, I noticed patterns. When certain things lined up, I was going to LD (things with memory, awareness, and sleep and all). Then as I got further and further in, less and less had to line up, and now I can seemingly LD any time, but it is just more likely to happen at times when things line up. This makes me think that is may be playing with loaded dice if you actually have more belief. Maybe the odds a lot higher to LD and we are just limiting ourselves with our mental barriers of all these complex problems when 2 + 2 = lucid is all we need.

Lucid inspiration
I have touched on it before and I will touch on it again. This time, even differently. Before I talked about lucid inspiration like this:
Lucid inspiration is everywhere. Everything you see can be turned into thinking about LDing. You need to see the world around you as a canvas and look outside of the box and paint on the wrong side of the canvas using only Darth Vader as a brush and your old prom picture as paint.
Basics. Everything, everywhere, lucid dreaming related.

Now that I have hit this tipping point of “enlightenment” about how lucid dreaming works when it is fully integrated into your life, I still agree, but there is something missing from the inspiration. I often see naturals (who have integrated it into their lives a lot obviously) that have no drive to do anything in a lucid dream. “They have already tried it all!” they say. I realized with this that a lot of them probably view LDing the same way that many view life! Pointless. I don’t mean that as in they don’t enjoy, but literally a place without direction. This is probably good for some that have a lot of direction in life and just want to use LDing as a relaxing fun time (like many do) and just chill and let dreams be. I am not saying that there is anything wrong with this, almost the contrary. That they have found what they want to use LDing for. I usually ask people this, and most people have trouble with a long term answer. I think that for me to fully enjoy LDing, I must have a place that I am going, something that I am trying to accomplish, but now that I am leaving, I am changing course. You may have already seen it here:
http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-cont...73-depths.html
I am making my dream goals about the dream. I may turn dream goals back to reality when I need help with something in waking, but for now, my dream goals are dream based.

This includes:
Things that will help the dream world develop
things that seem fun at the time
things that will make me more lucid
things that will make me happier over time

I don’t know if you have ever had this happen in a dream, but I often stop and think about my goals and go “meh, sounds boring” and then think of something more fun to do. And I am right! lol. The dream world is different, so why should all my dream goals be determined by things that seem fun here? I guess what I am trying to say is that I am going to make it all about the dream. If I have a dream goal it will be for something directly related to dreams. If I am learning a new attack or trying to gain “full control” it isn’t because I want to out here, but because I think it will help me down there in the future. I will probably in the future go back to experiments with waking and dreams (like hobbies and such), but for now, I focus on dreams in dreams. It really isn’t going to change what I do, but more of why I am doing it.

Motivation VS Enthusiasm
This is a common mistake that I think everyone is having problems with on this forum.
Motivation is your reason for doing something
Enthusiasm is your amount of positive energy towards doing something.
Your motivation doesn’t “Go low” or anything, or run out. Motivation is like a vision, if it is unclear, it will be hard to be enthusiastic about it. If it is clear, then your enthusiasm should be there a lot of the time, but when it isn’t there, then your motivation is clear enough that you don’t have issues continuing without enthusiasm. Pick something that motivates you. Something to grab a hold of in the dark days. Something that won’t change on Wednesdays or Friday nights.

EILD
EILDing is the future, it just isn’t here yet. I am not a crazy person that thinks that it will never come, but I am not hopeful enough to wait and pray for it to come.

On Interruptions
I know you are expecting a big “NO!!!” here (I put one there for you), but I really don’t think that lucid interruptions are bad for LDing. I think that if you are going partying every friday night, then that is probably dumb and you should rethink your life, but that is not where I am going with this.
Life will get in the way of LDing, time and again, and you have to accept it and move on. If not, then when you don’t go spend some time with your friends playing Battlefront until 5 because you want to LD, you will start to resent it. Especially when you don’t LD. You want to make it a balance. A good sleep schedule is really necessary for a healthy life, but if you have kids, they will mess it up. But don’t worry! These were foreseen by the great and powerful Sensei! (Don’t look behind the curtain)
I think that a lot of life is a balance. If something is continually stopping you from LDing. It might be something like a kid that is unavoidable, and you must just wait, because kids bring life, I freaking swear, kids are the best. I think that without my kids I would LD more, but with further consideration, without my kids, I would LD less, because I would have a much more dull life and I wouldn’t remember how to have fun. haha. Not saying that kids are the answer to everything here, just making a point.
This being said. If I am consistently not LDing because of drugs or alcohol… Maybe I should reconsider my hobbies? I personally am against drugs and drunkenness, so it might help cement my position in this, but these are literally think that LDing points us to a better life. I know when I am not sleeping enough because my awareness levels tell me. I know I drank too much because my memory of dreams tells me. I know that I stress too much because all of it is missing, except the dreams that I remember were stressful or worrisome. I find that things that consistently hurt LDing usually consistently hurt my body as well. I know that this is a personal opinion, but I believe I am entitled to it (I am entitled to my opinion right? and you read this far, so it is pretty late to get offended by something not directed specifically at you). I am not trying to offend, just bring to light that LDing seems to help me find healthy habits. Why can’t you just be happy for me!!!!

WBTBs
This would just not be complete without a shout out to WBTBs and Micro-WBTBs
Some things to note:
If you are present enough in a dream, you will notice the end of it, because you will be there.
If you have to pee when you wake after REM, you will notice the waking
If you put intent to wake up and succeed, you will notice the waking

Those are really three ways to WBTB without having to set an alarm. I don’t really feel like putting more about it, so you can just think about and all.

On paths
I talk about taking your own path a lot in LDing, and in some podcasts, I even go in depth, but I think that this is a good place to end it (though I feel I could keep typing for days). We certainly all will take different paths, but the ones to LDing are definitely all pointing in the same direction. awareness, memory, and sleeping is something that we all will have in common if we are on the right track. Ignore the ones pointing the other way. I am not going to go into great depth, but try to make a game of it. Read some people that actually lucid dream a lot and you will find it in varying amounts of all of them. Awareness of different things, memory of different things, sleep in different… wait that doesn’t work.

So this is the end. I will respond for about a week to this thread. Anything that is asking a question that is answered in any of the linked threads will be ignored… because I am selfish. Good luck reading 40+ threads and finding a question to ask me about! haha. I don’t feel like typing something that I just gave you a link to. I guess maybe I am not being selfish, just less selfless, because I am still writing this for the future LDers that may want to just peek into my mind and see what madness lies in the depths.