Idionym's Workbook

[Idionym]

Hey guys! I'm Luke and I'v been trying to LD for a couple of months now with no real success. I'm starting this during my finals week so I might be a little stressed which might mess with my recall because It's been extra bad right now. I just started DEILD last night, and after my third time of doing it, i woke up still, but my eyes started twitching out and blinking and stuff. I'v been DILDing for about 3 weeks, I RC and do SAT about 10 times a day. Hopefully I can come to a lot of the class discussions and am really excited to join calls

[OpheliaBlue]

Welcome welcome Luke, glad you could make the chat class. Hopefully the blinking/twitching thing was just a one time thing. Keep up your workbook and journal, and hope to see you in even more chats.

[Caenis]

Hey Idionym. You've had some good questions so far in the chat. So have you noticed any dream signs? What are your short and long-term goals? Good luck on your finals!

[melanieb]

That was a good chat today! Post some of your dream signs. You can take a look at my workbook (linked in my sig) if you need any ideas for what to write in here.

[Idionym]

I have pretty bad recall, so I think my only dream signs are my parents, but idk X My only two goals atm are to have a lucid and have a shared dream

[RareCola]

I have pretty bad recall, so I think my only dream signs are my parents, but idk X My only two goals atm are to have a lucid and have a shared dream I think you need to take a step back. It's great to be ambitious and aim for lucidity and shared dreaming but if your recall is bad this is what you should be spending your time focusing on first. Once you have your dream recall down, you can take it off the focus of your radar and bring lucid dreaming to the forefront. Start with mantras, I've found a generic "I wake up after each of my dreams and recall them perfectly" works well. Do this in conjunction with a good nightly routine (opening your dream journal to a clean page, noting down the date and time you went to bed, sitting up in bed for a while and focusing your intent on remembering your dreams, imagine yourself waking up in the middle of the night and writing down your dreams.) I'd definitely say not to skimp on this whole nightly routine thing, do it for a good 5-10 minutes before going to sleep. Dream recall is best focused on before going to bed, not after waking up, I've found.

[Idionym]

Thats a good idea Cola, I'm going to try that tonight. I'm also about to start my CAT stuff tonight, so hopefully after a week or 2 of the recall stuff i can have O.K recall. Tonight I'm going to take a B6 vitiman during my WBTB and then the recall mantra, hopefully it will work!

[Idionym]

Well, tonight I was going to use self-hypnotism to get myself to recall my dreams. I fell to sleep but I did remember a large chunk of one dream =D I also got a REAL journal to write my stuff down in, not just a big sticky note.

[OpheliaBlue]

Awesome! Post the dream chunk in your journal so we can read it! Sticky notes.

[Idionym]

I woke up about every 60 mins through an alarm and got 4 dream frags, so hopefully my recall is getting better =D

[OpheliaBlue]

Oh good, 4 dream fragments this time, instead of just the one! Definitely put them in your journal. Interesting technique you're trying. I'm curious to see the results.

[Idionym]

I think my fan was to loud tonight, so my alarm turned off on its own after a minute =/ I did remember a big dream chunk though, longer then any I'v had for a while.

[Caenis]

Hey Idionym, good job on increasing your dream recall! A long dream is still an improvement, so that's not necessarily bad that you didn't remember multiple fragments. You've been using SAT too, right? How's that been going? Have you noticed increased awareness in your dreams?

[Idionym]

I'v been doin SAT but not really any results yet, although I'v been kinda lazy on it because I'm focused on recall I'v still been doing its like 3-5 times a day but I don't do it for over 30 seconds probably. I will look around see if everything looks normal, read numbers/sentences twice see if they change/make sense, then I will look at my fingers and count them, and then do the nose plug.

[OpheliaBlue]

I have a question for you Luke, it came up in chat last night. Do you feel focusing on recall is actually taking away from focusing on SAT and lucidity? I ask this because it seems others felt similarly, though the concept was foreign to me. Just curious as to your opinion.

[Idionym]

Ya, it feels like it. This might change in 3 weeks when I start to CAT though.

[RareCola]

I really think you should put more emphasis on awareness, not just questioning if you're dreaming but your entire environment. Having more awareness not only helps with lucidity, but boosts the vividness of your non-lucids and therefore should help with recall. I also don't think you should try and "schedule" when you do things, like you said "in 3 weeks when I start to CAT". Lucid dreaming should be a natural process, as natural as dreaming. Trying to schedule something that should just come naturally isn't the best way in my opinion. Just do whatever feels right at what time. This is a quote from Exploring The World of Lucid Dreaming about awareness, and it really helped me develop my awareness skills. I highly suggest you do this: 1. Look Become aware of what you see: notice the richly varied and vivid impressions—shapes, colors, movement, di- mensionality, the entire visible world. 2. Listen Become aware of what you hear: register the various sounds taken in by your ears—a diverse range of inten- sities, pitches, and tonal qualities, perhaps including the commonplace miracle of speech or the wonder of music. 3. Feel Become aware of what you touch: texture (smooth, rough, dry, sticky, or wet), weight (heavy, light, solid, or empty), pleasure, pain, heat and cold, and the rest. Also note how your body feels right now and compare that to the many other ways it feels at other times, tired or energetic, stiff or limber, painful or pleasant, and so on. 4. Taste Become aware of what it is like to taste: taste a number of different foods and substances, or remember and viv- idly imagine their tastes. 5. Smell Become aware of what you smell: the odor of warm bodies, earth, incense, smoke, perfume, coffee, onions, alcohol, and the sea. Remember and imagine as many of them as you can. 6. Breathing Attend to your breathing. A moment ago you probably were not consciously aware of your breathing even though you have inhaled and exhaled fifty times while doing this exercise. Hold your breath for a few seconds. Let it out. Now take a deep breath. Notice that being conscious of your breathing allows you to alter it delib-erately. 7. Emotions Become aware of your feelings. Remember the difference between anger and joy, serenity and excitement, and as many other emotions as you care to feel. How real do emotions feel? 8. Thoughts Become aware of your thoughts. What have you been thinking while doing this exercise? What are you think-ing right now? How real do thoughts seem? 9. “I” Become aware of the fact that your world always in-cludes you. As William James noted, it is I see, I hear, I feel, I think that is the basic fact of experience. You are not what you see, hear, think, or feel; you have these experiences. Perhaps most essentially, you are who is aware. You are always at the center of your multidimen- sional universe of experience, but you are not always consciously aware of yourself. Briefly repeat the exercise with the following difference: At the same time you at-tend to each of the various aspects of your experience, be aware that it is you who is noticing these things (“I see the light...”). 10. Awareness of awareness Finally, become aware of your awareness. Normally, awareness focuses on objects outside ourselves, but it can itself be an object of awareness. In the light of or-dinary experience, we seem to be distinct and limited centers of awareness, each alone in our inner worlds. In the light of eternity, mystics tell us, we are ultimately all one—the unlimited awareness that is the source of being. Here, experience cannot be adequately expressed by language.

[Idionym]

Thanks Rarecola, I'm definitely going to use this! I was about to remember a dream but it slipped away, so no luck last night =/

[Idionym]

I remembered a pretty long dream last night, but have been getting really lazy with my reality checks/awareness.

[OpheliaBlue]

Cool, I'd love to read it. Why are you getting lazy with your RCs and awareness? Finals?

[Idionym]

Today, I also remembered a pretty long dream. I think my recall is getting more stable so I might start switching my effort more towards lucid dream, but I don't know what method I want to use =/ I'm getting lazy with my RC's and awareness because it doesn't feel like its working/doing anything. And finals finished last Wensday just btw XD

[OpheliaBlue]

Please don't give up on your RC's just because they seem futile Idionym. You found DreamViews, and subsequently joined the DVA which is great, because that shows you sincerely want to learn how to lucid dream. Motivation and stamina are huge when it comes to lucid dreaming. And I don't mean just getting to the first one. Sometimes even the best of us (not oreoboy, he's a freak of nature) hit dry spells. That's when you really need to lean on your powers of patience. I know it's a pain, I really do. But when you finally hit that moment, the realization that you truly know that you are dreaming, and you breathe that lucid air for the first time, it will all be worth it. Just hang in there man, and know we're here with you every step of the way.

[Idionym]

Today my recall wasn't to good, I went to bed to late =/

[Idionym]

Trying DEILD and still working on recall. Not much new.

[Idionym]

Im at camp so idk if I can do anything but dild Im doing some subliminal messages and learning different wild things, so idk