Re-engaging with Lucid Dreaming - Looking for support
Greetings oneironauts.
I have been gone from this forum for a long time, but this year I have been trying to get back into lucid dreaming, and I think it would be good for me to re-engage with the community. How is everyone?
So far I have achieved some small amounts of success at getting lucid again (albeit only for brief moments), trying to follow a new routine to help make it more fun and exciting again, but I still find myself struggling with the same problems I had before. My dream recall remains pretty excellent, but in short, I feel I am not able to get lucid often enough to put in significant practice within the dream world. I feel I may have set up mental blocks for myself. Reality checks helped a lot in the beginning when I first started but stopped working for me a long time ago; they just disappeared from all dream activity (has this ever happened to anyone else?). Still, I have written up my frustrations to myself and created some ambitions for me to try and reach.
One thing I have learned about myself is that I seem to respond well to external direction. If someone gives me a task to do, that seems to activate a sense of importance and motivation for me, and a strong, almost dutiful drive to get it done (I have seen this in my working life as of late). Which is why I think it might be good to maybe team up with a few people, and we can become lucid buddies who can support each other, share guidance and create goals and tasks for one another. Lucid dreaming has always been a very solitary thing for as (as with many of my hobbies and life in general it seems). We could get a few people together to help each other benefit.
Anyone interested, please feel free to reply here and get a conversation rolling.
Thank you very much. Have a nice day.
How to improve the self talk
Is there something in the wind? I too am finding myself re-focusing on achieving LD's. I recently have been using the SSILD technique. So far about 3 weeks in and one LD! For the record, that is only my second LD.
Also deal with the trade-off between thc and wanting a full dreaming existence.
I have built an Access db to record my dreams. This is my dream journal. I have columns for things like
Y-N was killed,
Y-N flight,
Y-N lucid,
Y-N known friends from waking life present,
type (planned, random, previous waking life unexpected prompt),
category (over 600 from a psych list found on the internet),
theme (kind of category groupings),
feeling,
how were problems solved,
color,
if there are recurring characters,
gift,
dream sign category,
dream sign,
sleep location,
did I wake up or recall later,
my comments,
and then the dream recall.
So far I have 1251 dreams recorded since 2003, but lost an entire year of recorded dreams due to a hard drive crash a few years ago.
Two recurring themes that I have not fully understood or explored are 1) many dreams about electric mountain bikes (I don't own one... yet), and 2) a place that is verdant green rolling hills and some canyons that reminds me of places like the Olympic peninsula or maybe northern Scotland.
I feel a bit of envy and sadness when I hear of others that easily have LD's, or at least have many more than I have. I understand belief is a big deal, yet struggle with the positive talk. Would love to hear others input.
The two books I like the most are from Waggoner and LaBerge , though I have several others also.