I was wrong about it all.

[TheDarkTow3r]

Hello everybody, I would like to share this with you. I’ve known about lucid dreaming for quite a few years now, and while I’ve had more lucid dreams than I can count, I’ve never been able to induce them at will. This is not to say that they can’t be achieved at will, because i believe they can, but I did not put in the work or the time to achieve this. Everything I did, whether it was dream journaling, fixing my sleeping schedule, or even certain techniques, I never gave it my all. I half-assed them. As a result, my lucid were always quite short, and I never had lucid tasks or goals that I wanted to achieve, therefore I would just randomly do whatever came to my mind. After a few months, I stopped everything. Stopped practicing. I concluded that lucid dreaming was pointless because even though you’re aware, it still wasn’t real to me. It still felt like I woke up with new memories in my head, but not exactly things that I experienced first hand. Kind of hard to explain. Over the years my interest in lucid dreaming would flare up again, and I would return to these forums to see what kind of topics were being discussed and if there was some new magic technique. There wasn’t and probably never will be. I think the last time my interest in the topic flared up was in 2012, when I had a week where I had unplanned WILDs during my morning naps from 10-11. It was fun but I always woke up a few minutes later do to never practicing stabilization techniques. One week ago I was going through some old boxes and found my copy of “Exploring the world of lucid dreaming”. That prompted me to get back on the forums and see what’s up. It also made me buy a new dream journal and start performing reality checks during the day again. 2 days later I had a brief WILD but I wasn’t able to get out of bed. I decided to forget about WILD for the time being, make an account on these forums instead of being a passive ghost, and start working on my prospective memory so I can have some success with MILD and focus mainly on DILD. This morning I had a DILD. I wasn’t really expecting anything to happen because I only told myself once to “remember I’m dreaming” (I’m still working on prospective memory and just started reality checks recently), but in the dream I’m climbing this ladder thats underneath some train tracks. I heard the laughter of my girlfriends nephew, and then on top of his laughter I heard my ex-girlfriend laughing, too. I thought, “Hmm.. that’s odd. Oh yeah thats right, I’m dreaming.” Once I realized that, I didn’t need a reality check to confirm it. The experienced lucid dreamers on this forum will understand me when I say that if you’re actually in a situation where you feel the need to reality check, then that need itself is actually an indicator that you’re dreaming. Regardless, I did the nose pinch just to remind myself what it feels like to breathe through a plugged nose, and cool air flowed in effortlessly. After that, everything I’ve mentioned above hit me. All my failures to give it my all, all my half-assing, all my assumptions that these lucid dreams were no more vivid than non lucid-dreams, and what happened next stunned me. Everything became ultra-clear. Hyper realistic. Whatever you want to call it. I said to myself, “Wow…this is real. This is happening right now. I’m in the dream. This is me. I’m me. Everything I thought was wrong.” The level of realism was mind-blowing. It was literally undistinguishable from real life. I started making my way down the ladder and thought to myself to just jump off and fly away, but the dream started fading. It happened slowly. It went blurry, then a grey, then black. I felt myself in bed and was going to get up to write this experience down, but then I decided to try WILD (DEILD more specifically). As soon as I made that decision, the vibrations engulfed my entire body, however no dream was forming around me. This has happened before so I tried to get up but that didn’t work either. I could still hear my air conditioner so that informed me that even though I was near sleep, I was getting too close to the real world. I let another wave of vibrations course through my body, and I tried to manipulate the ringing in my ears so it could drown out the sounds of waking life. It didn’t work. Either my skills were too rusty or my REM phase was over. I’m assuming it was the latter because I awoke refreshed and energized. Whoever actually decided to read all of this… thank you. I really needed to get this off my chest. I guess the point of all this was to inform all the new lucid dreamers out there who are having trouble not to give up. You can do this. It will happen. Have faith in the practicing and give the techniques your all. Don’t jump from one to technique to another like I did and waste your time. Don’t try something like MILD for only 3 days, and don’t try it without exercising your prospective memory. If you follow a technique follow it down to the letter. If you don’t, how will you be able to focus and improve on what’s not working? Learn what kind of sleeper you are, heavy or light? Learn how long your wbtb needs to be. Short or long? Do you fall asleep too fast or do you end up awake the whole night? It’s a process. Learn it and live it. Don’t ever give up!!

[gab]

Thank you for posting that! Great post! Indeed, some describe at least some of their lucids as "more real than waking life". I have had a few of those, actually I think most of the longer ones at least start out like that. The clarity and detail can be incredible and I feel more alive and "there" than I am right now, awake. Check out the lucid task challenges, you may find having a goal a great motivation. Happy dreams

[TheDarkTow3r]

I'll be sure to check that out; thank you!!