Hey. I just joined, although I've been checking out this site for months.

What I've been trying to figure out about these induction techniques (mainly ones like MILD and VILD) is, why would you need to focus on lucid dreaming so hard (especially right before you go to sleep) if dreaming is supposed to be your brain's way of recycling unimportant thoughts or memories?

Something I notice about pretty much all of my dreams is that they're usually based on something I think very little about earlier in the day. Simple example:

A few nights ago, I had a dream about a nuclear bomb being dropped (fun). Earlier that day, I remember thinking about nuclear explosions for about a minute, and then not thinking about them at all for the rest of the day...


The whole reality check thing makes perfect sense to me. I'm talking about how in some techniques you're supposed to focus on having a lucid dream before you go to sleep...