Thread: My own variation of WBTB. Bon apetit!

It gave me 3 LD's on 3 subsequent nights last week, and 1 this week - so I guess there is something to it. Other things that seem to help a lot - the subliminal audio files (especially the 2nd one) and peanut butter, although I only started trying those out last week.

Also, the last time I had an LD, I woke up and couldn't fall back asleep for three hours - and then I had a dream just like my first "educated" LD (which I got after an almost sleepless night, as well)

Hmm interesting. I think I'll try this tonight.

Anyone else had any success with this method? Me, I practiced some more, and learned a few more interesting things:

- if you wake up early enough in the night, like 3 or 4 hours before the time you have to get up and don't fall asleep for another 60-90 minutes, it still works. At least for me it does.

- at first I avoided using the alarm clock, relying on my bladder to wake me up Now it seems my bladder got used to holding it and I don't wake up early enough. So I set my alarm clock to 4:44 - a sort of ritual, and also the time I woke up from my first LD last year - and get up to turn it off

- sometimes when I'm really sleepy, even if I feel my bladder is full, I go right back to bed and fall asleep. That way I had a whole row of LD's the other night

- when I sleep longer than 8 hours, I tend to get such weird/ridiculous dream signs that it's just immediately obvious I must be dreaming. Just tonight I saw myself in the mirror and I had AN EARLOBE GROWING OUT OF THE SIDE OF MY JAW

Hah, well this method sounds great because if I stay up too long during a WBTB like you, I feel too awake to go back to sleep.

I could try this after waking myself up in the night to attempt a DEILD, and if that messes up I'll go downstairs and take a swig of apple juice.

So I worked on my little technique some more, learned a few new things and ditched some old ones - and today I had THE most amazing LD so far. Nothing really exciting happened, I just basically took a bike and went downtown. As trite as that sounds, it's huge progress, in most dreams I'm just flying around aimlessly till I wake up (which happens very fast in those dreams most of the time). So anyway, I became lucid when, upon looking at myself in the mirror, I realized my muscles are WAY too huge (I work out regularly, but not THAT hard). Other than that, though, my reflection looked pretty convincing. So I did the light switch test - and while it did switch SOME lights on, it wasn't the ones it was supposed to. It does that and it had me fooled a bunch of times. So when I made sure I was dreaming, I headed for the door, remembering that my goal was to go downtown - which is where I'm THINKING my dream guide might be. Suddenly it got really dark around the door, the blackness almost burnt my eyes - so I kinda thought "I don't want it to be this dark" and suddenly a bluing beam of light appeared. I can't tell whether it was a flashlight or my hand, but cast enough light for me to get out of the appartment. I didn't even check what I had on at the time, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't wearing any shoes - but it seems things were sorting themselves out on the go. Next thing I know, a bike is standing propped up against the wall right outside my door. I didn't even think about it at that time - but I kept reminding myself about often while awake. So I took the bike and went outside. It was night - but all it took was for me to think "I don't want it to be night" and voila! Sun went up within seconds! The rest of the trip went on pretty uneventful - but insanely realistic. There were people, cars, noise, I think I even had some music on in my headphones. Most of the times there are hardly any people in my lucids. And I got pretty far riding my bike - but eventually I woke up because I had to pee

What I learned today:
- if you keep reminding yourself of your goals and dream accessories, at some point they will just kick in when you go lucid. You won't have to think: "Hrmmm, what was I supposed to do in my LD?" You'll know and your dream will know.
- dream reality has its way to sort things out on the go - in weird ways, sometimes. Sometimes all you have to do is think "I want to..." - and your wish is granted. Works with darkness, daytime, and even complex flying acrobatics.
- I like to sleep till 8am Whether I go to bed at 2am or 9pm, I can sleep till 8am. And the longer I sleep, the crazier things happen in my dreams.
- it seems to help if after waking up in the middle of the night you do some brain exercise. Some creative or analytical thinking. For instance: for a while now I'd been trying to come up with a logo design, and right there, in the middle of the night, I got an idea and stayed awake for a while to polish it. Right after that I had my LD. Same happened with the first LD I described, somewhere in this thread.