Thread: My Long-Term Lucid Dreaming Goals

*Note: This is a moderately long post

When I most recently began trying to lucid dream again, I started to formulate an idea: I realized that, if I do not have a long-term goal in trying to lucid dream, there was no way I would be able to maintain my motivation and enthusiasm for lucid dreaming; I would end up just dropping it again, only to come back several months later, promising myself that I wouldn't drop it this time, and then it would all just repeat. So, with this in mind, I began the formulation of my long-term lucid dreaming goals, and eventually rested upon a few that form a conglomerate whole that I find to be incredibly cool, interesting, and is something that I can imagine driving me to perform better in the development of my lucid dreaming abilities. In addition to that, I can picture myself being more motivated when I actually do reach this goal; it is one that automatically creates motivation simply by attaining it.

Now, I should stop all of the buildup and tell you my main goal. My main goal is to experience persistent stories across multiple dreams, with an astonishing level of consistency and immersion into these persistent stories and worlds. 'But what are the foundations of this goal?' You might be asking yourself. Well, lucky for you, hypothetical reader, I just love expanding on my thoughts in excruciating detail!

Let's assume that it's a given that one of these foundational goals of mine is to lucid dream on a regular basis, as well as other basic things such as high clarity and awareness in dreams, and that these don't need any further explanation for obvious reasons. What would my first foundational goal be, then?

I believe that I should try to knock out the easiest part first. Thus, my first major goal on the path to my overarching goal is to be able to overwhelm myself with sensations and/or emotions without being awakened from my dream. Additionally, to tie in to this goal, I also plan on being able to feel sensations, such as pain, in a realistic way without having to linger on the thought of those sensations. These are necessary for the sake of being able to fully immerse myself into the drama and action of my story, without me having to calm myself down, so that I may act naturally in these situations, which would lead to me being able to act impulsively, according to the situation, without me having to collect myself for a moment and think, 'It's just a dream.'

Next, there is the removal of dream powers that do not make sense in the world I am dreaming in. If, for example, there is a fantasy world with a very specific 'magic' system, I want to have to use the magic system just like anyone else would, as I think it would take away from the whole experience if I can just "expect" hard enough and fix whatever problems I'm having instantly, and I want my subconscious micromanaging me, forcing me to play by the rules of the dream, even if I don't really want to. As far as these goals go, I imagine this one being the most deceptive to me. Now that I think about it, I would likely need to stab at my lucid capabilities without removing any level of awareness to successfully meet this goal. But, I think it should work just fine, after I get somewhat experienced in lucid dreaming.

After that is the last of what I would consider the "tier 1" goals- that is, goals that don't inherently imply persistence, but will be put with the persistence to further benefit the story. This goal is for me to consistently be put in a dream world with complex DCs- that is to say, DCs with specific personalities, realistic intellect, and other such things we associate with "Humans" normally. I don't have much to say about this one, because I haven't really looked into the patterns and behaviors of DCs yet.

Finally, there is my last goal- The one that I consider "tier 2." This is probably going to be the most difficult goal to reach. And, what is this goal? Well, it's persistence, naturally. I've decided to group all of the goals about persistence together so that I don't write too repetitively. But, what exactly do I mean by persistence? Well, by persistence, I mean complex worlds, stories, characters, behaviors, and more that will carry over from one dream in a story to the next. To achieve this level of persistence, I will likely need to improve my memory and awareness in both the waking world and dream world, but, aside from that, I am not entirely sure what I will need to do. It's rather exciting, honestly.

By now, you may have realized what I meant by a goal that automatically creates motivation by achieving it, but, in case you haven't, I'll explain now. If you are invested in the plot of something, you will often find it easier to keep up your motivation to follow that story. And, if that story is locked behind lucid dreams, you will transfer this motivation to follow the plot over to your motivation to practice lucid dreaming. And that, my friends, is my main goal of lucid dreaming. When I do manage to achieve this goal, be it sometime soon or sometime years from now, I'll post the dreams on here in the format of a story instead of a dream, if I don't forget