No motivation?

[Etamag]

Hello everyone! I'm new to this forum, but have been practicing lucid dreaming in the past, to some success. I've stopped about a year ago as my work has becone increasingly demanding. The last few weeks I've been practicing again, but to no avail . I do manage to make time for reality checks, ADA, meditation and other things that used to work, but it seems that I can't gather the mental availability, motivation and mindset for lucid dreaming: my mantras (MILD) aren't as meaningful, I can't wake myself up for FILD, etc. So my question is, how do you develop the motivation required for lucid dreaming, and the mental stamina essential to truly question our reality? I'd love it if you could share your methods. Thansk! P.S: My current goal that got me back into lucid dreaming is creating Hogwarts from Harry Potter in my mind and using magic

[AstralMango]

Think about all the cool things you want to do in a LD.

[MasterMind]

The most important thing that I can recommend is the mindset of enjoying the action for the action itself. I didn't found lucid dreaming first and then got interested in awareness philosophy and practice, I was interested in awareness philosophy and then lucid dreaming found me. It's like new years resolutions: "Oh yea I am going to get so fit for the summer" > 2-4 weeks later "Oh I got to work? Ah well let's watch Netflix and chill." In Schwarzenegger's book Arnold explain that he won the bodybuilding competition not because he focused on winning but because he loved to work out! His opponent only talked about winning and saw the training as a means to an end. The winner sees the action as the end in itself and enjoys it. Who do you think work the most? See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiXxifU5ilQ&t=32m50s So my adivce is that you find a method that you LOVE to practice and read about and think about and talk about. Because this is the difference between a short-term motivation strategy and a long-term. Short-term: I am only happy when I get the result I aim for > Every time you don't achieve that result you aren't happy and every action is just another proof that you aren't there yet. Long-term: I am happy when I take action > Every time you practice you enjoy it and the result is indirectly achieved and is an afterthought. This goes deeper than just lucid dreaming. The only activity people seem to enjoy for the action itself is sex, oh no wait scratch that, there the orgasm is usually the goal. But think about it. We have been raised to believe that we need certain criterias in order to be happy: When I get X I'll be happy. So in other words we limit our own happiness. What if we consciously lowered our criterias to appreciate that we are alive, healthly and grateful for the things we have. Or perhaps even more radical: STOP setting a criteria for our own happiness and just be happy. We can even do the same with lucidity. But since our brain is unconsciously programmed to resist this way of being, it will take practice. So the least we can do is to enjoy it. The activity I would recommend that make all of the above close to automatic, is meditation because this is basically like training your brain like a muscle. The grey matter in the prefrontal cortex that governs: wellbeing, self-reflection, self-awareness, actually grows and that will be noticed in your waking and dream life as well. Source: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...-better-brain/ Peace!

[Etamag]

Your comment is likely one of the wisest things I have heard in a long time. Thank you Would you say, regarding your experience, that mindfulness and meditation are the way to go for a lucid dream and waking life?

[MasterMind]

Your comment is likely one of the wisest things I have heard in a long time. Thank you Would you say, regarding your experience, that mindfulness and meditation are the way to go for a lucid dream and waking life? Short answer: Yes But to quote a truly wise man: "By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest." - Confucius So build your own wisdom and help others, because when you do, you help both the needed and yourself since you have to put your experience into words. But in my experience the practice was a long journey to arrive at a surprising answer: The most effective way to do anything is to learn to do less. The problem is most often not what action we do, but doing too much. We should just live a simple life without stress that is the natural way of being. But we have been taught to praise thought, and this is actually insanity. As Eckhart Tolle said, the only difference between a crazy lady talking to herself on a bus and us, is that the crazy lady does it out loud. By becoming mindful and aware of the present moment by noticing your thoughts and emotions you actually become fully aware of the present moment for the first time. The practice of meditation is in its essence, the act of doing nothing. But since we have forgotten what that is like, this paradoxically become an act in itself, and in order to explain it we have to explain small actions and mindsets that will lead to that understanding. What we start to notice in this state of consciousness though is that we can observe the world without having to think, without judging, without labelling, we are just BEING. In the physcal world our whole experience is filtered through this mental noise and we aren't actually aware of where we are. We might be aware that we are awake but we are acutally not fully in control of our actions and experience, our fears and desires control us, stress is the norm and if you observe the world anger and hate is even becoming a common theme. In the dream world our desires and emotions aren't only a filter, they are manifested as a whole experience. So even if you are in a dream, aware of the experience as dream, just as in reality, you will be controlled by desires and fears (or thoughts). This is why mindfulness is important. It's not about not thinking or not feeling, it's about becoming aware of the thoughts and the feelings, that's the first step. Meditation is in other words not only allowing you to become aware in physical and dream reality, it also allows you to be in more control of your own reality. It's difficult to understand, because silence, stilness and peacefulness can't be described in words, it has to be experienced. But some practical advice: Try right now to set a timer for 10 min > Go and sit on a chair and close your eyes and focus on your breath. If you haven't meditated before here is my predicition: You will judge the activity as boring and you will feel feelings of unease and impatience. < (This is the result of modern day society.) My god I write much... I should answer with annoying zen koan riddles instead: The answer to all your questions is found by looking at a wall. Peace!

[Sensei]

Motivation is your reason for doing something. If you have a motivation for doing something, then write it down and don't stop doing it until you have achieved your goal in spite of your enthusiasm being up or down. We can't change emotions as we cajbchange our reasons. There will come a point in Lucid dreaming, or any hobby, that you truly want to quit, not even in an emotionally negative way, you will just feel like it is a waste of time and not worth the effort. The people that succeed in life at anything are the people that are able to do things even if they don't feel like it. That being said: There are some steps to make this shift a little easier. First: set an end date for LDing, mine is on June 12, I have promised myself that i won't quit lucid dreaming until then no matter how much I don't care about it. On June 12 I usually just promise myself another year tho. I did have to take a week and rethink things once, but I still wanted to do it. Second: Don't add things into your daily or nightly schedule that you don't enjoy. Try all sorts of things. Try all the different meditations that can help lucid dreaming, whichever one you like the most, make a daily thing, whichever one you like second most make a weekly thing, or just something you do when you have extra drive and time. Third. Enjoy your dreams. Lucid and non lucid. This will make it a lot harder to lose your enthusiasm, since recall (especially at the beginning) is less fickle than lucid dreams. Fourth. Like mastermind, find something that is specific to you and that you enjoy and that you are good at and incorporate it into your practices. For him, meditation works well with lucid dreaming. For me, dream incubation works well with lucid dreaming (and visual meditation). I am not as... metaphysical as mastermind, but finding a meditation style that fits you and helps lucid dreaming is really hard to match. I wouldn't say that all meditation helps lucid dreaming equally, but spending time with "directed thinking" really connects well with "directed dreaming" . I originally wasn't going to comment, but I think ya need another opinion other than masterminds since, while his opinion is very well educated on LDing and everything, his path is not everyone's path, but his points are definitely true, especially for him. But you might start walking along his path and get bored in a couple weeks because lucid dreaming is a personal journey and it needs to be personalized all the time. I recommend checking out many paths, but your path will be one that no one else has trodden. Because the is the nature of lucid dreaming. A very lonely road.