Thread: Silverlight's Workbook

Welcome to the Class SilverLight!

I'm glad you're putting alot of focus on getting your dream journal more filled out. It helps, it really does. And concerning nightmare: many members on the forum, as well as people I know in real life, learned how to become lucid from nightmares in order to wake up. Most often when they were children. If you ever want to hit someone up about that specifically, one of the academy's apprentices, Chimpertainment, has alot of experience with this. Just FYI.

Finally, yes, get your sleep where it needs to be. Obviously, if we ain't sleeping right, how can we expect to LD? Do you find that you need 6-8 hours of sleep, or (if you're like me) 8-10 or more? Or less? Whatever amount of sleep you need to maximize your chances of having a lucid dream, is up to you to figure out. A good rule of thumb that I've seen around the forum, is no later than midnight. Then WBTB 5-7 hours after that, then maybe WBTB in 30-60 minute intervals after that. Experiment and see what happens. Looking forward to your progress!

Thank you ophelia, I'm really excited to join the class!
Now that my dream recall has improved a bit, I realized that sometimes I have really stupid dreams. There was this dream I had yesterday about my friends being trapped inside a man's pocket, and i kept trying to convince the people passing by that my friends were hidden in his pocket but they just wouldn't believe me. (obviously, ha). Also I'm having some trouble doing the WBTB. I find that if I wake up after 5 hours or more of sleep, and get out of bed, It's extremely difficult to get back to sleep, even if I keep the lights off and just go to the bathroom for one minute. However I don't really have much trouble randomly waking up at night at any given time and going back to sleep, when I'm not planning to do WBTB. If I wake up after sleeping for less than 4 hours though, i'm just too groggy and fall asleep again immediately. I hardly even remember waking up. Well i guess it's all about finding the balance. One last thing: I don't use an alarm to wake up, do you think I should?

Originally Posted by Silverlight

Thank you ophelia, I'm really excited to join the class!
Now that my dream recall has improved a bit, I realized that sometimes I have really stupid dreams. There was this dream I had yesterday about my friends being trapped inside a man's pocket, and i kept trying to convince the people passing by that my friends were hidden in his pocket but they just wouldn't believe me. (obviously, ha). Also I'm having some trouble doing the WBTB. I find that if I wake up after 5 hours or more of sleep, and get out of bed, It's extremely difficult to get back to sleep, even if I keep the lights off and just go to the bathroom for one minute. However I don't really have much trouble randomly waking up at night at any given time and going back to sleep, when I'm not planning to do WBTB. If I wake up after sleeping for less than 4 hours though, i'm just too groggy and fall asleep again immediately. I hardly even remember waking up. Well i guess it's all about finding the balance. One last thing: I don't use an alarm to wake up, do you think I should?

Welcome to the class, Silverlight! It's great to have you.

I also don't use an alarm to wake up for my WBTB. Over time, this just became a natural habit for me. At first I sort of trained myself by drinking some water before bed but eventually my body just grew used to waking up in the early morning, having a quiet period of reflection/meditation/study/dozing off, then going back to sleep.

Because you have trouble going back to sleep sometimes, it's probably better if you can avoid using an alarm. However, if it turns out that timing is absolutely crucial for you to fall back asleep, then maybe the alarm can pay off. If you do experiment with an alarm, I might suggest something that gently plays some music to pull you out of sleep rather than some kind of blaring siren thingy. When the alarm goes off, it often crushes my dream recall and leaves my mood ever so slightly "off".

When you wake up after less than 4 hours sleep, are you able to maybe sit quietly for a few minutes and give your mind a little bit of time to wake up without waking your body up too much? The main thing to avoid is letting your heart rate rise, in my experience. If you aren't already, I'd start keeping records of my attempts at WBTB so that you can review it later and see what is working best for you.

Good luck!

Thank you Canis!

Originally Posted by CanisLucidus

If you aren't already, I'd start keeping records of my attempts at WBTB so that you can review it later and see what is working best for you.

Will definitely start doing that! I guess I just have to find what works best for me. From my experience so far, I've only managed to WILD during afternoon naps. It's amazing, 80% of the time when I nap (with the intention of WILDing), I become lucid. Sadly though my LDs don't last long at all. Just the feeling of being lucid makes me so happy and excited, which wakes me up. I've read so much about this but still, I don't understand how can I hide the feeling of being excited from my own mind?! If that makes any sense. And When I do manage to calm my self down sometimes, the dream becomes so dull, and I get the feeling of being groggy, tired, and powerless, or even worse the dream ends or I slip into a non-lucid dream.
I've made so much progress since last time though, and I'm having much more frequent LDs and some cool non-lucids too!

Short LDs from excitement are something that we all deal with, particularly starting out. It still happens to me, even though it's less often than at the beginning.

Since you are so strong with WILD, one option you have is to DEILD whenever this happens to you and just dive back into the dream. DEILD is really just a WILD but under even more ideal circumstances, so you can put those same skills to good use again!

The other half of the equation is building up your expectation that you will get lucid and then have some other specific goal in mind. Something to take your mind off of the extreme excitement and (sometimes) surprise that you've achieved lucidity. You know how you hit your nap WILDs 80% of the time? Remember that. It means that when you become lucid, you are exactly where you expected to be. Now simply acknowledge it and anchor yourself into the dream scene.

I like having something very specific to do. If you are having trouble slipping out, consider having the goal of rubbing your hands together and just getting really, really into the detail of the dream scene. Make it your mission to appreciate the incredible detail your mind can produce for you. Check out all of the scenery in the dream with every sense. If you have not had the chance to do this, it is a mind-blowing experience. My 2nd LD was a series of experiments along these lines and I still think about the results with a sense of wonder.

You are doing great!! Keep it up.

Just a quick little update:
I'm back, been very very busy lately "not really", just lost motivation ; HOWEVER, I got a random lucid this morning, which pulled me back in . Will probably be posting a lot more now, and will try my best to get back in lucid dreaming shape asap..

All right, Silverlight, congratulations on that lucid! And welcome back.

One way to keep motivation up is to have a small set of short-term goals that you are very excited about. That'll vary from person to person but looking at your list, "learning to fly" seems like a perfect candidate!

Flight is awesome. You're gonna love it.

Good luck!

Thanks! , flying seems awesome but there's another thing I recently became very excited to do and THAT is having a conversation with a random DC. Any random DC ! I want to know what it's like to communicate with a dc whilst being aware that he's a creation/part of my own mind. The thought of it just drives me crazy. In the past I was trying to summon and talk to some particular DC, but now I've stepped it down a little bit. I don't know if this is still too hard to do as a starting task. Anyway, Can't wait till I get another lucid, since all I've been getting is nightmares. Well at least that's better than getting nothing.. (for me )

Warning : Confusing Post Incoming !
My recall has been 0 for a while.. No wonder though. I sleep late and when my alarm rings I jump out of my bed.

Today I set the intention to have a DILD, and I slept earlier than usual. Woke up 5 hours later, remembering nothing, so I decided to do try the wbtb. I stayed up for 5 mins only, drank some apple juice, got back to bed and closed my eyes, but had trouble sleeping. I felt like a maximum of 10 mins had passed but when I looked at the watch it appears that more than 40 mins have passed! I could have sworn I didn't sleep, but soon i started to recall some dream fragments and and when I focused a bit more i recalled the following!

In the dream I was trying to wbtb in my room but having trouble sleeping! So I opened my laptop and checked some websites (maybe dreamviews I don't remember).
I remember thinking "How is my laptop working? " ( my laptop isn't working in real life because the charger doesn't work and I still haven't bought a new one. I must have came up with some bizarre conclusion as it made sense to me in the dream afterwards.) I then changed rooms and went to sleep. (in the dream) This then caused the dream scenery to change ( or inception maybe ?) Anyway I find my self in my primary school; however, my friends and teachers are the same from this year. Then one of the teachers leads us to a room where we automatically start chatting and play some playstation. (And that of course made perfect sense to me in the dream )
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I guess it was a False awakening. I'm really bad at catching those. I mean if I didn't change rooms and if my laptop wasn't working in the dream. I think I would have thought that i just that had a dream about the school part. And I would think that I actually got up and used the laptop in real life!

Anyway after recording some notes of this false awakening as not to completely forget about it in the morning, I later attempted to WILD 3 times and every time I just fell asleep.. lol. But when i got up between every failed attempt, I managed to remember the dream and record some notes about each one.
When I woke up in the morning I managed to write them down fully as I remember them.
Only about 10 lines each though.

Well anyway, not a bad night, I guess. I managed to recall 3 dreams and a False Awakening instead of nothing.
I think I'll try to Deild tonight instead of writing notes after my WBTB.

Nice work, Silverlight! WBTB is great not only for inducing a lucid but it's also very good at improving dream recall and raising awareness in general. I think that recall and awareness play off each other, which is why WBTB helps them both so much.

The false awakening was pretty cool. Isn't it crazy the things that you'll sometimes believe in those? You're doing exactly what you should by reviewing what happened, thinking about when you could have/should have become lucid, and setting your intention to catch it next time and RC. False awakenings are part of the game and often wind up incredibly amusing. (I liked the PlayStation playing!)

Your goal of conversing with a DC is great. You are going to love that, I think. They are endlessly amusing and typically full of surprises. The fact that they are controlled entirely by your own brain yet they are so interesting and their behavior so hard to predict... just fascinating to me.

Keep up the good work!