Thread: Booney's Workbook

Thanks Paigeyemps!
It really is hard to explain isn't it. Especially if you want to describe the difference between non-lucids and lucids.
Sometimes I'll mention lucid dreaming with my friends but then it always ends up in telling stories of these crazy dreams they once had.
They're cool stories, but I can tell they don't have a complete understanding what lucid dreaming actually is.

I run into this a lot. I've given up on it. At least there's dreamviews!

It's been two weeks since my last post and I have nothing to report.
I've quit DJing but still managed to recal one or two dreams a night. My expectations or plans were to go and be very dedicated but I guess life got in the way. Also my sleep was way better than before so I'm gonna take this as a sign to stop doing wild. I'm going to try and get back into it. But only some mild/sold and no wilds and wbtbs.

And best wishes to all!

Sometimes a break is good. I would just continue daytime awareness and hope for random DILD. Best of luck!

Week 14:

I think I'm finally good to go again. This probably has something to do with my workshedules getting back to what they were. I've been reading some threads on DV again and it brought some motivation back.

Motivation was lacking these last few weeks. And even though I consider lucid dreaming as a main hobby I practice, it still hasn't found its place in my day to day life routine.
Last few nights brought some very vivid and. if dreams so I'm getting familiar with the dreamworld all over again. The excitement is back, so that's a good thing.

Booney! Im glad to see you're back. This site and the people have been my main source of motivation as well.

Welcome back Booney! :3

Thanks for the welcome back guys.

I've slowly been DJing again pumpin' up the recall. Loved last nights dreams, I strongly remember the scenery because they were so big and detailed. I don't remember the themes of the dreams much but the locations were beautifull.
One of them was about me being a lumberjack in Canada and my parents were visiting me.
I was a bit older, had a wife and a 6 year old daughter.

I've been sporadically trying to induce certain themes and locations in my dreams. But what about stopping certain things from appearing?
It's frustrating for I still don't have the lucid abillities to controle everything. Are there ways, non-lucid to keep certain thoughts out of your dreamworld?

I've tried to focus even more on my dream incubation in hopes of it taking up all of my "dreamspace" if you will. But last night it all went downhill again.

Originally Posted by Booney

I've been sporadically trying to induce certain themes and locations in my dreams. But what about stopping certain things from appearing?
It's frustrating for I still don't have the lucid abillities to controle everything. Are there ways, non-lucid to keep certain thoughts out of your dreamworld?

I've tried to focus even more on my dream incubation in hopes of it taking up all of my "dreamspace" if you will. But last night it all went downhill again.

That's a tough one dude. I think most of us try focus on what we want to see and just deal the best we can with things we don't. Contoling "everything" is seems more high level. Maybe look into dream yoga? I just started reading The Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep by
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. It's some pretty intense stuff but I plan to start practicing this once I have thoroughly studied up on it. One of the things that I found interesting is that is sounds like maybe he disagrees with the whole "No sailor controls the sea" train of thought.

Originally Posted by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

Although some Western psychologies believe that the dreamer should not
control the dream, according to Tibetan teachings this is a wrong view. It is
better for the lucid and aware dreamer to control the dream than for the dreamer
to be dreamed. The same is true with thoughts: it is better for the thinker to
control the thoughts than for the thoughts to control the thinker.

Perhaps this is more of what you are describing. Or am I totally off here? Anyway if you haven't already I recommend reading it.

Ah yes, that hit the nail right on the head.
Definitely something I'll look into. Thanks!

Funny thing is, yesterday I was typing this big rant about what might cause these thoughts and as I came close to submit the entry I read it over once more and all frustration was gone.
It always helps me to write these things down and try to look at them as an outsider.

---
As for last nights dreams, had a moment of clarity this afternoon about a dream I had. Turns out I had a few lucid thoughts in my dream.
It's fun how quickly I reach these points in attaining lucidity again, I just got back into it this week and I'm already in a place that took me weeks when I first started.

Cool im glad that helped.

Maybe lucid dreaming is a bit like riding a bike. Ive put it down and picked it up again many times and it was never as hard as the first time.

Week 15:

Still going strong and working on getting my old recall back.
To do this I've taken some new steps, like with my DJ. I write things down in advance to organize it better.
It kinda looks like this per page.

Date/bedtime
Dream #1 wake up time
Where was I;
Who was I with;
What was I doing;
How did I feel;
Fragments;


Dream #2 etc..

What has also helped me improve my recall is how I work with fragments. When I just have a few fragments I start playing the association game.
For example last night I had this image about my old English teacher walking his dog. Teacher = school. And then I remembered most of the dream was inside a school.
I'm beginning to get very good at playing my dreams backwards from the last thing I remember of them. Also what helps me is having a good memory of the day before.
It's fun to look back and see how the mind constructs dreams with the thoughts that occupy your mind.

I'm going to try and see if in time I can predict my non-lucids, find out which events or thoughts during the day will end up in my dreams.

Last night I had one of those dreams where little dreams just flow into each other.
I was doing something on a computer, it kind of looked like google earth but more detailed. I even mentioned it during the dream; look how detailed this is!.
It was Google Earth only with a stronger zoom. You could zoom in on plants leaves cells molecules and even atoms!

During this I ended up in the program sort of and was walking in somekind of mixture between ancient egypt and rome.

I think reading old DJ entries triggered the imagination and vividness of the dream. Also I think these vivid dreams are a sign that my next lucid might be coming up.
Since I started last week I've got everything up pretty fast.
[x] Regular bedtimes (impossible with my workschedules but I've still managed to keep some sort of rythem)
[x] Keeping DJ
[x] Recall, back up to +5
[x] Realism, detailed dreams in colour not blurry and with sound and touch.

I think the last thing I need to work on right now is RCs.
Since everything looks like it's getting back to what it used to be I might attempt a few days of ADA.
Figured out ADA is what brought me down in December because of how exhausting it is to be aware 24/7 it really took away the fun of it all. I decided I will use ADA only when chances of LDing are high.
And looking at my progress during the weekend and last night I decided to start today, so hopefully I will achieve some "lucid glimpse" tonight.

I like your DJ organization. I may borrow that. I usually just take short habd notes but Ive been really bad about recording the full dream. I guess putting just the important stuff down would be easier.

Im glad you're getting back to normal. One thing I've noticed about ADA is that it can make you mentally tired. There's nothing wrong with pulling back a bit. I end up doing something more like the sporadic awareness tech anyway. But my goal is lucidity all the time. Its a learning process that will take a long time to master. Pushing your self too hard is never good.

Week 15 summary;

Last week started out promissing with my new way of DJing and increased recall. Unfortunately the ambitious plan with the ADA ripped it apart.
I guess I was a bit overconfident with the feeling of LDs being in my grasp. Looking back I should of stick with what I was doing untill then.
Also I caught a cold last week and my workschedule wasn't my favorite in terms of LD attempts. So last week will be remembered for the few awesome dreams it brought.

Week 16 plan of action;

This week I will restore my recall which shouldn't take more than 1 or two nights. I also have a way better workschedule this week that suits my preferred sleepcycle.
I just hope I'll lose this cold soon.

EDIT:
I've also been designing this dreamlocation and trying to incubate it and I think I had some succes last night. I wasn't lucid but I remember being in a wooden construction that felt spiritual.
The night before I was looking at stave churches.

Hey Booney, just curious, do you have any drawings of these dreamlocations? Must be cool to actually have a blueprint of them or something

With pleasure!



These are the first rough sketches just to get an image out there.
It started with Gorillaz' Feel Good Inc video in mind which is what the floating island in the middle is based on.
For a place to live in I at first though of a treehouse which is shown at the bottom, which is based on a story I started last year but today I dismissed that idea. I did some research on architecture during my favorite era's in history so I might design a few buildings with mixed architectural influences.
Like the sketched church like building at the top of the image which is based on old scandinavian stavkirke or stave church.
The crater on the left is part of the mountain but I'm thinking about losing the whole floating island idea and instead make some sort of little village or fortress inside the crater alone.

As you can tell it's still in a very early stage and nothing is set in stone yet.
But I do feel like the wooden construction I was in last night could have been a stave church like building.

I'm getting close. There's a strong possibility that I've visited the church like building last night.
I was with friends and we were going to our holiday destination. It was in a forrest and we had to climb a very steep and high hill to get there. I remember seeing something that looked and awefull lot like a stivkirke when I lookd up through the trees!

This got me very exited, also like I expected my recall has jumped back up to the 5+ dreams a night. I think I remember about 4 solid dream scenes and a handfull of dreamfragments.

I don't know what's happening to my recall. Feb 6th, amazing recall - Feb 7th, nothing - And today I woke up twice during the night no recall what so ever.
Untill in the morning after 6/7 hours of sleep all these fragments and dreams pop up. I can't even keep track of all of them.

Are these really from that last couple of hours or could I be remembering dreams from earlier that night?

I'm relieved that the recall came back in the morning, but I'm used to having my most vivid dreams around 5 or 6 AM at normal bedtimes. Everything was cramped up in the end today.

Also had my first real conversation with a DC since a while. He was an old classmate but he said his name wasn't what I called him and he pointed me to someone else I know with the same name.
It was fun how difficult it was to keep the conversation going, the longer I kept asking questions the more he stopped making sense. A shame I didn't attain lucidity right there.

I wish I could help on the recall. There are so many things affecting us all the time that some times we just have bad recall and we don't know why. I think just keeping to what you have been doing will get you back on track.

I think I needed more time awake during cycles. I've been starting to use the WBTB again and recall skyrocketed.
Now I'm back to having to much content to write in the morning, it's great!

End of week 16:
This week I came to some new insights about dreaming and lucid dreaming. I have been experiencing a lot of things that I've only read about that have to do how the dreaming brain works. Last week was also a good week for tracking down the experiences that are causing my dreams.
I want to keep a seperate notebook were I explain the origin of my dreams. I think I can explain 80% of my dreams with previous experiences throughout the day no matter how weird they are.
It surprised me how a very small clip of video or a single sentence can be the base of a whole dreamstory but I found it to be so. This also has blown my believes in the interpretting dreaming busisness out of the window. For now I stick to dreams being imaginations brought by everyday life, at least for non lucids.
I guess this is also a sign of my memory improving and me being more aware during the day. How else could I notice these things?

My new DJ template has helped a lot so far too. It has been a great way to organize thoughts that are so random when you're groggy.

Lucid progress was also present last week. I am getting better at noticing lucid opportunities. I've noticed a distinct feel when my dreams start to slow down to a reallife pace. Must keep an eye out for that.

Alcohol, I have to cut down on my weekend drinking if I want this to work. I noticed last weekend gave me more dreaming content then ever. Also I think when you drink a lot during the weekend you spent the next 2 or three nights getting everything back to normal. Just enjoy a few.
For the record, it's not like I spent every weekend hungover from bingedrinking, I know my limits and I never go overboard. But for lucid dreaming it is still too much I think.

Week 17:
I'm going to keep up the WBTB in my routine, it helped me before and I have no idea why I stopped using it in the first place.


EDIT:
Just noticed I'm recalling a dream which I didn't record in my DJ. For the obvious reason of emotional stuff. I'm getting tired of it though, these dreams provoke feelings I don't have in real life.
But I don't want to bore you with the details, it's a very cliche problem and will pass. Just needed to get it out of my system here because I can't be bothered to write it down in my physical journal.

Week 17 Day 2:

I've been noticing a change on my non lucids. Or more a change in my behaviour. I notice more things in the dreams. Like yesterday I mentioned how the pace seems to slow down when I'm close to becoming lucid. I now also noticed (within the dream) how weird interactions with DCs are.
Last night I was looking for someone and I kind of expected her to be the first female I would encounter since that's kind of how dreams work, you think about something and it happens before you even seem to finish your thought.
But this time I stopped and checked before asking my question and I noticed as she turned around her face was still morphing to its final form, this took a few seconds and she wasn't who I was looking for.
The next one was the correct woman but like the first time it took some time before her face was " right" I did notice a change in hairstyle and she looked older.

I've also been looking through my workbook here and it's fun to relive the progress leading to my first lucids. But I also realize that those lucids were probably beginners luck or flukes. But they are important for knowing the feeling.
I can tell that the progress I'm making more is more stable and I'm gradually getting closer to achieving an actual induced lucid dreaming.
I think I will look into some DILD and DEILD tutorials this week just to refresh the knowledge.

I'm starting to act like a lucid dreamer in my dreams, it's just a matter of time before it's a reality.

That's great progress! Keep it going. You are about to get massively lucid.

You have no idea how right you are Xanous, it's frustrating how close I am to gain awareness in my dreams.

Concerning dreamsigns, my progress is best described in the words of Calvin Candie;
Dreamsigns, you had my curiosity. But now you have my attention.

It's actualy very exciting. Two nights straight I had the realization of something not being right, but so far I am constantly being distracted by DCs. I'm betting before the end of week 18 I'll have had another LD if not multiple.