Thread: Viperouge's Workbook

Hello everybody! this is my workbook for the class.

Reality checks
I am currently trying to remember to perform those on a regular basis, but I usually use:
- Check my watch (analog watch)
- Think what I did in the past hours of the day

Dream signs
After recording more than 25 dreams in my DJ, I was not able to recognize any dream sign yet.

Short term goal
- Experience my first LD!! (I am a total newbie!)

Long term goals
- Be able to explore my unconscious
- Be able to visualize how my waking life should be in order to help me succeed in it.
- Use LD as a tool to express my deepest creativity

Lucid/Dream recall history
- I sadly never experienced a LD. It never happened to me, not even randomly.
- My dream recall used to be REALLY bad before I started to learn more about LD and therefore had to exercise to increase dream recall. Now I can recall a dream almost every night.. before, it was more like 2/month!

Current Techinque
I am trying to use MILD, but I did not succeed yet!

Sleeping pattern
I usually go to bed around 12 and wake up around 8.

Comments
I am probably the most unexperienced person in the forum, but I am eager to work hard in order to master this great skill!

Wow, first of all, good job at keeping everything so organised! Second, congratulations on taking the first step to the right direction: working on your dream recall. Many people ignore this, but it's just as important as everything else, and it's great to see that you've worked hard and got it MUCH better!

As for techniques, don't worry. There are MANY of them out there, and you never know which one is going to work for you until you try it.

Good luck and sweet dreams!

I think I once read that an analog watch is no good for reality check because they tend to be better at keeping perfect dream time unlike digital watches which are easier to mess up - something about geometric pattern being easier to consistently render than writing or numbers are.

For spotting dream signs think of patterns that may be more subtle, for example a dream sign that is more subtle is if many of one's dreams involve extreme emotions, so then one would be on the lookout for emotionally charged situations, and remember to question reality seriously whenever someone has a reaction that seems maybe too emotional. Or another dream sign could be work places, even if it is not always the same one. One of my dream signs is cars, but alas it is all kinds of cars, and given how often I see cars in waking life, I find that it is too often to do reality checks whenever I see one, which is a shame, because I do have a lot of cars in my dreams.

I seriously doubt that you are the most inexperienced person on this forum. Actually this initial workbook entry already shows how much you have already learned. Keep up the good work! I wish you lucid dream success soon, perhaps even tonight.

Hi viperouge! You look like you're on the right track. As you go, feel free to try out different techniques to figure which ones increases your in dream awareness. You just might find that increasing your amount of sleep or trying out a technique called Wake Back to Bed will increase your awareness enough that you can experience your first lucid dream. Hopefully you get it soon!

First of all, thank you everybody for your support and useful suggestions!

Day 2 of my workbook:

- I changed my reality check. Now I try to breathe from the nose while "closed"

- this morning I woke up, I did not remember any dreams so I decided to stay in bed a little more and I focused on having a LD. I ended up with a very short dream (I was in a sort of videogame and I had various kind of weapons), then woke up, decided to sleep some more, dreamt about a NYC subway ride with a girl that i know, woke up.. Upon waking I noticed that the dreams were very realistic and vivid, if I think back though (after a whole day) I remember them as regular dreams.. I'm confused.. Could them be lucid dreams without the ability to be controlled?

Hope to hear from you guys!

I'll go to bed now. Hope to succeed tonight!

Sam

The nose plug reality check is my favorite! It's a neat feeling being able to breathe with it closed! As far as the dream, only if you were aware you were dreaming was it was a lucid dream. The vividness doesn't classify it as a lucid dream. Good luck tonight!

As dolphin said, vividness does not classify them as lucid dreams. Vividness and lucidity are two separate qualities of dreams. While it is common for lucid dreams to be vivid, and often becoming lucid increases the vividness of a dream, however, one can also have a blurry non-vivid lucid dream and especially early lucid dreams may well be blurry. What makes a dream lucid is the dreamer's conscious awareness that it is a dream. I have had some very vivid dreams during which I was convinced it was reality, and some lucid dreams which were so blurry that it interfered with my experience and yet I knew it was a dream and was trying to stabilize the dream.

Thank you all guys!

Today I remembered to perform a lot of RC, doubting reality.. We'll see if I can lucid dream tonight!

That's great! Good luck!

Hello! So it has been a couple of days in which I can't remember any dreams (or just very little)..

I had to be woken up by an alarm for work. Could this be the reason?

Thanks!

Yes, alarm clocks can mess with dream recall, especially if they wake you up at the wrong point in your sleep cycle. Try setting your alarm for half an hour earlier for example, or go to bed half an hour earlier - experiment with your sleep schedule to see whether it makes a difference. If you have a smart phone their are apps like "smart alarms" where you can put the phone on your pillow or mattress and based on when you stir, it will adjust when the alarm rings, so if your alarm was set for 6am and you are stirring a lot at 5:30 then your alarm would go off half an hour earlier instead. If you have a smart phone, you could give that a try.

However, did you know that our minds are capable of waking us up at will at a time specified without an alarm? You could go to sleep with the intension of waking up half an hour or an hour before your alarm, and see whether that works. Waking up without an alarm may be less disruptive, and make it more likely that you remember a dream.

Did you know that all of us actually wake up every night naturally every 1.5 or 2 hours? Most of us just turn and fall back asleep and forget about it. But one can through sheer will power change that, and these natural middle of the night wake ups may be great opportunities for dream recall, and you can either write down the whole dream or just some key words at that time, and then fill in the dream when you wake up for good in the morning. Last night I went to bed around 8:30pm because I was exhausted, not having had enough sleep during other week days this week. I woke up at 1am and wrote down a long dream. Then I woke up at 4am and remembered more dreams. And then I actually slept some more, and when I woke up at 7:30am in the morning I recalled even more. Of course, it was Friday to Saturday night, and I do not work on Sturday so I had the luxury to mess around like that, but the point is, whenever you have the time to do that kind of thing, I highly recommend middle of the night dream journaling.

I will definitely try to "wake up" and write dreams at night.

I have been through a difficult and stressful week which hasn't helped my progress.. i had a couple of dreams in which I recognized that something was extremely weird, but I was never able to question whether is was a dream or no..

Do you guys think that I should keep trying with MILD or should I try maybe WILD which looks like more "controlled"?

Thanks for all your support guys!

Hmm, the advice I have always heard is to give any method you try some time to work, and don't switch methods too soon. Besides if you are having dreams where you think something is weird, you are getting very close I think, so I think it is beginning to work.

However, I fear I must point out that I myself am not as good as all that with sticking to one method for a while. And ultimately if o e method does not seem to be one's style, there is nothing wrong with trying to see if another method suits one better.

I feel like you are very close to reaching lucidity. I had my fair share of odd dreams before finally becoming lucid. Keep doing MILD and I'm sure you'll get one soon enough

Hello guys! Wonderful news (maybe)!!!!

This morning after I woke up, I decided to stay in bed a little more with the intention to dream (since my gf's alarm woke me up, and I couldnt remember my dream).

I ended up having a very strange dream which made me question whether I was in a dream or not... So I performed the nose plug reality check, and I felt I was able to breathe!!! From that moment, everything around me disappeared, I saw White, than Black, than a sky full of stars, I felt my heart beating VERY fast, and I woke up... total time 5 seconds I would say.

Now my question: was it the beginning of an LD and I just got overexcited right away? or was something else? Also, Couldn't it be that I was dreaming about having a lucid dream?

It has been 1.5months of trying almost every night with MILD.. maybe that is why I got this excited.

Let me guys know what you think!

Good job with that successful RC!

And yes, it's very common to wake yourself up by getting too excited, that's where dream stabilization comes in... I suggest you read this tutorial, some of those tips can be quite useful, IMO.

I'll read it tonight for sure, and I hope it happens again!

It definitely helped my motivation though!!

Hey guys, I've been trying to have another lucid dream but I had no luck
I'm still using DILD and i was reading the SAT article in the intro class...
Do you think that I would be able to succeed with wild??

Originally Posted by viperouge

Hey guys, I've been trying to have another lucid dream but I had no luck
I'm still using DILD and i was reading the SAT article in the intro class...
Do you think that I would be able to succeed with wild??

I see no reason you would NOT be able to had a WILD. I believe that the best way to find a technique that works for you is to try them all until you find it.