How long did it take you to have your first LD?

jfriday11,

Sorry for my late reply - about intention setting (e.g. mantras) and prospective memory - see cooleymd's reply... I do it after my RC+awareness, and I also visualize becoming lucid or particular dream scenes that I want to achieve.

My process during the day is that during the day I "randomly" (not at specific times) do ~3 times the following:

awareness+RC - awareness is essentially tuning into your senses and focusing on your surrounding. Every little noise, smell, or sensation, etc... Things you would normally miss or ignore. Just observe your environment focusing on what's happening around you. Take the time to do it, like a couple of minutes. Awareness for me is the first Reality Check - so while I'm doing it I check if anything is unusual, or if dream signs are present, etc, and ask myself thing like where have I been, where am I heading, etc. (and really think about my answer - does it make sense?). After that, I do one or two more RCs from my favorite list, things like: nose plug (internal / external), blinking and observing if anything changed, counting fingers and observing if the hands are normal, try to see my own nose / eyebrows / mustachio and move them (which I can do in waking life), etc.

Then comes the part of intention setting and prospective memory and visualizing being lucid or being in a particular dream (like daydreaming). These depend on your goals - so customize the wording / visuals based on them. Also, just choose a couple, don't go overboard.

I also do the same just before going to sleep, and during some awakenings at night.

Apart from that I try to RC+awareness at every awaking - to avoid false awakenings, i.e. dreams that start by waking up and thus are harder to catch (because they have a logical beginning).

Im a week in and its 1 step forward, 1 step backward.

For example I got to the point where I was having multiple, clear dreams 2-3 nights in a row where I woke up and remembered them and recorded them
..........and then, boom, 2-3 nights where I know I had dreams but no idea what about. Wake up foggy.


Im currently no where even close to lucidity.

However, I have noticed the day time nap strategy has potential. It seems like you fall into dream sleep way faster on the couch at 3, than I do in bed at bedtime.

I have the odd time where I don't have any recall either. Don't let it phase you and let it go.

Just start with a clean slate every night.

How do you remain motivated after a nights failure? Like some days I prepare so much for lucid dreaming and am excited to do so at night but then nothing happens and I get discouraged. Like no matter how many times I say I can do it, there is always this nagging thought telling me otherwise.

and btw, how long should awareness be done, I try to do it for like 5 minutes.

Artax is it on weekends your recall goes up and on weekdays it goes down? that would be about getting lots of sleep and being relaxed, that is the way it is for me, tho I can often recall like 2-3 segments from each of 4cycles during week nights, but on weekends and especially last cycle of night recall is good.

Kamenriderbaron, sure I had lucid 77 this weekend but I didn't stabilize and lasted only about 10 seconds, tho I flew and the look on the kids and dogs face was priceless as I jumped into the air.

But even in that dream seeing an old school bike with the huge front tire stolen chained to a post and then seeing 4 women dressed in 1850's grab with hats and bows and such and men in top hats at an 1850's style diner was more interesting then the lucid take off.

In fact If I was to rank the lucid among dreams this weekend it would come in third. Behind two excellent non-lucid dreams :)

so learn to enjoy all your dreams, I even managed to spot a schema in one of the two, tho only upon waking reflection. As to which of those two was best it seems pretty much a tie but with the short lucid a distant third place :)

Kamenriderbaron:
like cooleymd already said it is very IMPORTANT that you appreciate all your dreams and found them interesting and like to think and remember your normal dreams too. see it like this: when you get up and sit on the toilet it is way nicer to remember some cool dreams you had that night and treat it like a comic or a movie you can "watch" while doing your dump and that every night for free. way better than waking up and already thinking about how exhausting or bad your day will be or what you have to do etc.
your NLD are the raw material from which you can learn how to lucid dream. you need to know how you dream, how you fall asleep, how you wake up at nights etc.you need to get familiar with the whole dreaming package that way your lucids will come way easier.

every night is your playground to experiment and to practice. try to stay positiv. the longrun and the consistent practice is super important. the sooner you get this and stay equanimous the better you get because you will do one step after another in the right direction. you on the other hand see it more like a sprint. you do one day a hell lot of daywork and effort and expect to see instant results the night "nothing" happen (means no lucid but maybe your dreams are more detailed? more present? or you can recall more dreams? that is a big success already!) and you get discouraged and you make a lot of steps back with this setting so you the next day you stand still or move back instead of every day a handfull of daywork and good intention setting at night and if no lucids? no problem i can do this amount of work every day and maybe after 5 or 7 days of this constant work my recall and presence in dreams gets gradualy higher until i get my lucid "just like that".

there are way to many variables to just like that can do a sprint that turns into a lucid. on some days you do everything right and perfect but just dont get a lucid because you are to tired, eat something wrong, had something on your mind etc. sometimes it seems the day was doomed and you couldnt concentrate and had a lot on your mind and you go to bed and dont believe to get a lucid but nevertheless you set your intention and just like that you get an awesome lucid from it.

same with your awareness practice. the continuity is imortant dont burn yourself up. do as much possible but in a way you can do it over a long time. try to shut of your autopilot as often as possible. it is okay to zoom out or loose awareness the gaining it back and noticing that you was away is the imoortant part. try to stay constantly critical concenring your state -> am i awake or asleep'? this question should be constantly in the back of your head and everytime you notice you zoned out its like a high five in your face with a chair and you are like: wait wtf where was i the last minutes what did i do am i dreaming?! :)

hope i could help you. if not tell me and i will try again with different words :)

Truth, I find it fun to keep a dream journal and my dream recall is getting better.

Took me 40 years..mbut that was because I never heard of lucid dreaming 😊After I read about it in ETWOLD, 3 days.

Could school/work have an effect on attempts to lucid dream? Like I take a very rigorous school program and sometimes I need to get a good nights sleep before the test. Would attempting to Lucid dream may be have an effect on my schooling or the other way around. Should I set aside LD practice for school?

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Originally Posted by kamenriderbaron

I am noticing how in my dreams everything appears to be darkened/shadowed as well.

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I honestly only got this far reading through replies so far but this one centence here interested me greatly and I felt I needed to have my part on it, even if just writing this reply out helps me to make sense of it myself and gives me a way to return to this comment with ease.

I notice this too, it seems that the more vivid my dream gets the more it feels like anything just beyond the dream's reality is dark and empty, like western movie prop buildings. Like everything although appearing three dimentional is infact two dimentional, like watching a movie. This is what I interpreted as 'dream feel' along with an ever-shifting mindset during my last LD. I actually found that I was quite interested in finding out how the dream was structured, feeling like maybe if I reached out I could touch and tear through the fabric of the dream. What would be on the other side? The rest of the dream? Another dreamscape? Or maybe a void which I could step into like others use doors, windows or even mirrors in a dream?

However my ever changing mindset, paired with a lack of discipline and dream control meant I wasn't able to focus on this and get very far with it. I did teleport in the dream but it was more of a "I want to be over there" thing rather than a "I want to teleport" thing.

Thanks for bringing this up here, I know it's off the topic of the thread for me to put this here like this and for that I apologize but maybe it's food for thought for us inexperienced LDers to look into as a means of realizing the difference between awareness whike awake and realizing you are aware of a dream. Now for me to just figure out how to accurately visualise this during MILD so that my mind recognises it and goes "hey, wasn't this important to you? Check it out!".

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Originally Posted by kamenriderbaron

Could school/work have an effect on attempts to lucid dream? Like I take a very rigorous school program and sometimes I need to get a good nights sleep before the test. Would attempting to Lucid dream may be have an effect on my schooling or the other way around. Should I set aside LD practice for school?

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Certainly you might want to give up your WILD attempts

but the next time your taking a test re-read the questions see if they have changed since you first read them, if so reality check.

also next time your taking a test and your naked, you are likely dreaming, or got a very poor nights sleep and forgot to get dressed :)

No reason to stop intention setting, reality checking, and at awakening checking for FA, and unless your late for the test no excuse to stop journaling either. Maybe give up on the wake back to bed via alarm tho. If you wake naturally you might want to just audio tag your dream journal on a cell phone hanging from the ceiling on a string, and go straight back to bed tho so as not to risk insomnia. Just hit record button and yell out 'Beach, beached whale, tidal wave, Pamela Anderson' (or whatever the dream was) then roll over and fall asleep fast.

I don't try WILD, just FILD, which shouldn't make me lose too much sleep. I personally don't think that could cause me any trouble. My grades are still fine. I go to bed at 9 and wake up at one to do so. I have to wake up around 6 though.

FILD ultimately is a variant of WILD as you maintain awareness from the waking state through to the dreaming state as opposed to DILD and it's variants where you gain your awareness from within the dream state. Maintaining awareness generally makes it harder to actually fall asleep.

Cooleymd was likely suggesting you go with DILDs as there is very little before bed work and no need to maintain awareness while falling asleep. Actually dropping the WILD/FILD attempts for a while might even help cause you to DILD, did for me.

I have been trying awareness some times during the day, but I kind of find it mentally exhausting. But I tend to visualize myself becoming lucid from previous dreams, so I hope that helps.

As well, should I still keep my dream journal along with focusing on school?

Absolutely. I work long and stressful hours and on busy days I don't have any dream recall but I still make the effort each morning to open to a fresh page, date the top and write what I tried, how I felt waking up, how many times I remember waking up (also a great way to realise your micro awakenings) and if I checked the time what times I woke and the final time of awakening. This alone can do wonders and you will start to see patterns, it will internalise in your subconsious aswell, as something important to you so that it can make a point of 'notifying' you when these things occur.

I find my quality of sleep is increasing as I record my sleep patterns, they are still fairly erratic due to work but they have become more steady. This will help you to remain focussed at school through the day as you will be rested and also remember actually sleeping well.

Thanks for the advice. I also tend to notice, that I think their is a part of me that thinks its way too good to be true to happen to me. Like when I imagine myself becoming lucid, I feel like its only a fantasy or something like that, especially when I hear all the cool things people do.

3 weeks for the first one then about 2 months for the second one.

Is there such thing as trying too hard btw?

No, but there is such a thing as stressing, which kills lucidity. If you are stressing, the odds of getting lucid plummet. This could be from work, school, friends, family, or just about LDing. When people work really hard on lucid dreaming they tend to stress and it works against them. The key is to work really hard and not stress. Or work as hard as you can without stressing.

Do you think trying to LD each day would be trying too hard?

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Originally Posted by kamenriderbaron

Do you think trying to LD each day would be trying too hard?

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Originally Posted by Sensei

I try about 42 times a week

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Since Sensei apparently attempts to Wild 2500+ times per year he won't likely think so :)

but with his < 20% overall success rate will he even succeed 500 times :) he he :)

I succeed about 520 times last year, but that is wilds and DILDs and that number is getting higher. I wild about 104 times last year.

I recommend just having things in your schedule that you can do everyday, if it is something that you can't do every day without stressing, then it isn't something that you should try to do everyday. Maybe make it a weekly thing if you can't do it daily. That being said, if you aren't doing something every day, then you will keep getting better.

Thanks. Btw, what are some good Dream Journals I could read here for inspiration?
As well I try using awareness, but I feel like I might be doing half-heartedly. Any tips on how to make it more genuine?