Thread: Steph´s Workbook

I´ll try once more this night with alarm clock after 5 hours - last two nights I tried WILD, when waking up naturally - and bit later, than maybe good - about 7 h after falling asleep in etwa - and both times I really didn´t honestly hold on to awareness and slipped away - willingly.
But differently than with the two times with alarm - I had no DILD following, but another dream - and got up much too late for my liking..
Maybe the startle helps.

Well - anyway - started journalling again - and maybe I link up in here.
Singing Bowls and two more fragments - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views
It seriously helps writing it out - and I do not do it "just for myself", at least not now..

After a bit of being all round otherwise focused - I want "back in"!
Tonight - I hope.

Did you stay awake for longer when using the alarm? When I'm feeling too sleepy and go back to bed too quickly I usually miss out on lds later on. Maybe sit up in bed for a while and revise dream signs and goals? That should work to help activate brain centers a bit more.

Good luck with your next tries!

That could actually be it - yes - I did stay up longer with the alarm!
I was also thinking about this already - because of feeling so mellow - I did wanted right back to sleep - lucid or not..
I will try with 15 or 20 min. - I think, I was never up for longer these 5 attempts.
Having your help on here is wonderful!
Thanks - will take that into account!

Soo stupid - I did not set the alarm correctly, it didn´t go off.
Edit: Correction - seems it did or should have and I didn´t hear it - was my mobile, and if I need alarm for work - I take a louder one..sigh..
But again I awoke naturally - quite late, the awakening, I took note off - maybe after 7 h of sleep which is already enough.
But I said - good - take this chance once more - and I stayed up about a quarter of an hour.

No such luck - same as the last two nights. But I had some more persistence - and tried it out with SSILD and later with mantras - I just lay there awake.
I had drank a cup of tea - which I did with the alarm-sessions, too - but there it was making more sense - it being earlier in.
This here was not too mellow, but too clear..
And about half a hour later - I went to the toilet and lay down to sleep a bit more - hoping for a DILD - but no.
So - back on square one from yesterday - alarm-clock after 4 h and up for 15 min. it will be.
I´ve been also drinking water after fogelbise´s advice - seems not enough of it, though, to wake up earlier fully between dreams.

And I will more seriously also prepare for pure DILD, which has to be properly expected and prepared for, I guess.
I hope I come back to my initial assessment, that WILD seems like an easy at least incubator for DILD.

Back to the hard work it is - and a proper alarm this time around.

On the brighter side of things, you did get to practice the techniques. And yes, preparing for DILD, i.e. doing daily awareness work is really important. Don't tell anyone but after getting some fantastic results (both with dilds and wbtb by-product wilds) I kind of became lousy with the daywork and a dild reduction followed, not immediately but gradually. So, I have to start with the good old induction structure once again. Revisiting the basics is good for all of us.

Usually I write over the day and different things to my lovely three direct teachers - this here today is "only" an almost copy-paste from Sageous WILD class.
I have been paosting it towards dear fogelbise just before - I just do not think, I will find much more to say about it - buut - there are questions inside.
So - do not feel disrespected and also feel directly adressed:
Attachment 6004

Steph discovers a new species of roadblock:

The effort yesternight didn´t take place - but this last night I tried WILD again.
And I find it went quite well - up to one point always:

I was relaxed, didn´t feel my body any more - at one time it felt as if I was spinning slowly horizontally - more my head seemed to make a left-turn with my upper body. But not a lot - I tried nudging mentally - but bit more, and I would have moved.

Buut - maybe 5 times or so - I started "making something" out of what I saw on the back of my eyelids.
After some time of black - there were black and white and grey clouds swirling about - I could make these take on forms - and with a certain complexity - a real scenery appeared, and got clearer and clearer - each time another one.

But it was so weird - every time I came to see real details full colours and all - there was an almost physical surge to draw me into the scene, which before I had only witnessed "from nowhere" so to speak.
And every time, I just could not let it happen, not on purpose, it was more or less subconscious direct reaction.
I sucked myself back out.
It was really like having a short startle reaction, a bit of physical arousal - and like on a gummy-band - I got my consciousness back in my body on my bed.
And had to more or less start all over again.
As said - it was at least 5 times, and I really tried to be prepared for it, and let it happen the next time..
Nope.

Is this how it feels, when it works, as well?
And I just need to let myself get sucked in without excitement?
I couldn´t do away with the excitement - it felt like I was sucked from location to location in in real-life!
Not fear - but a general alarm-situation.
How can I counter that?

It felt as if I just about stopped it off, before a physical sucking feeling would have followed.
How does it feel, when you transit?
Unfortunately I went to bed so late yesterday (daaarts..Attachment 6003) - that I decided, I should get up to the day, and not turn around and hope for DILD.

Maybe closest to an actual WILD yet? Unfortunately again no LD last night!

Thanks for the post Steph. You are a very good and dedicated student, so I know you are going to surprise us with some great lds very soon.

Here's my interpretation of the experience and I hope our possibly sightly differing feedback across workbooks won't confuse you. In the end, we speak from personal experience (as well as general knowledge) and these experiences can be quite subjective. Sageous has tons of experience and I think it might help to browse through his Q&A to read questions others have posted and his reply to them, in addition to his reply to the specific questions you asked. That way, you can get an overview of how this process is going for a larger number of people.

From reading your post, I think that you were on the verge of entering those dreamlets. It's always hard for another party to ascertain where the dreamer is (in one's body, asleep, in the dream or somewhere in between). Since you say you didn't feel your body anymore and later got to observe new and different scenery, I can conclude you went past the normal falling asleep phase, did a successful WILD induction and if you had let go, you would have found yourself in one of those dreamlets/scenes.

I know it can be hard to manage this whole process because it really is exciting. Also, sometimes this startling reaction may happen bodily with little volition on our part. The important thing is to keep going, which you did really well and you didn't let awareness slip either. Yet, to be able to get in the dream, you need to have a tiny bit of gentle release of that control, so that you may allow the dreamlet to suck you in.

Sometimes it can be quite easy and fast, at other times, you might find yourself observing those dreamlets from a distance for a while. In that case, it may help to imagine oneself being part of the scene, ideally being engaged with some sort of action - seeing one's hands grabbing nearby objects, running, cycling, etc. Yet another possibility will be to try to invoke a particular scene by visualizing and best again, thinking of being part of it and/acting inside (or thinking about acting). This might be quite useful when there is no dream scene available, when you are in the void or if you happen to be browsing through a number of scenes. I encourage you to play with all of these methods (letting go, involvement, visualization) since they come in quite handy and we may face different situations.

Finally, here's a link to WILD entry types that you might have already read, but it doesn't hurt to check this out again.

http://www.dreamviews.com/wake-initi...ntry-wild.html

Thank you!
Yupp - it is very interesting to get answers from different points of view.
What seems to be common is - for once - let go, let it happen.
It might be I was wanting to enter and be sucked in too much - this sucking might have been of my creation - and not the best thing to do.
Either watch it - and maybe it is HI or some sort of NREM entry - or it was an unfolding dream, which I tried to grab too forcefully.

1. Dream images
First type of entry involves looking at the back of your closed eyelids. At first, you will see black and grey fog swirling around. Maybe you see some colors. Then you start seeing simple objects and geometric shapes. These will evolve into more complex pictures and dreams. You may see movie like scenes. When these scenes change into one big movie screen covering your whole field of vision, the dream is ready for you. But so far you are just an outside observer.

You may either wait for it to envelop you and you suddenly find yourself inside of a dream, or you may look at the dream scene, pick a spot on the ground and say slowly and deliberately something like "I am there". This should transport you inside a dream.

This from your link - Gab had also answered me directly.
Now it makes even more sense - the scenes were not yet covering my whole field of vision, when I tried to get sucked in.
It was more, the scene was enveloped in a surrounding of nondescript area.
So - chances are high, I did my conscious efforts sort of too early.
Should have gone on watching and see, if a full surround scenery appears - maybe then I would have been there - or could have tried gab´s command stuff.

The latter I will now have in my repertoire for such situations as well.
If it is not a dream-inlet, but for example HI - it just won´t work and nothing is lost or damaged..


One conclusion threads through all the wonderful answers I got: More of "letting it happen" - "watching it unfold" - patience.



Now to my latest mishap:
Yesterday - I took some time - three times - and visualised one of my most persistent dream-signs - the house I spent my youth in.
And I tried to promise myself, to RC when I came across it. Really went around it and inside and visualized very well - was amazed at my good memory.

But it ended up with me perfectly making a fool of myself.
I dreamt of the house - and - stood there - looking at the texture of the wall - and believe it or not - I thought to myself - wow, thank the heavens - it is still standing and I am not only dreaming of it again!
Because if I were dreaming - it would not look so realistic in every detail.
Instead of RCing or pondering how I got there, etc. - I closely inspected the house as a RC, sort of..
Yepp - so stupid - spent my dream happily renovating the inside and decorating - and - coming up with a perfectly rational answer, as to how it was still standing.
Like - it was sold - ground and all - but left untouched - and I got it back, before the demolition ball took it away.


Was really mad at me, when waking up!

A question: What sort of RC are you using in RL and in dreams - the same?
Which exactly?
I do not "trust" the more inconspicuous ones, if it is about is it really a dream?.
Except sometimes - it is clear - me floating or so.
But anyways in a LD I had lately - I had to repeatedly nose-plug, to make sure I can for example ignore a group of elderlies pleading for my help for a supposed accident victim round the corner.
I went there in the end anyway - see what it was all about - but first I nose-plugged twice, and only then did I make fun of the worried elderlies calling on me..
Despite having flown there.
Probably I need more experience to be more sure about what is what..

The latter I will now have in my repertoire for such situations as well.
If it is not a dream-inlet, but for example HI - it just won´t work and nothing is lost or damaged..

For sure. And indeed, nothing is ever lost with these attempts, it's great practice one gets with each attempt, successful or not. You can never get too much practice and as I said, these events may vary, i.e. not be exactly the same even when you get the hang of. It's really an amazing and cool experience how one can keep one's awareness beyond the point of falling asleep.

But it ended up with me perfectly making a fool of myself.
I dreamt of the house - and - stood there - looking at the texture of the wall - and believe it or not - I thought to myself - wow, thank the heavens - it is still standing and I am not only dreaming of it again!

That happens to me as well. I have my list of places and even meditated and relived the whole process of moving out from my last place, yet I found myself having a non-ld about packing again. I am determined to go over the moving out once again sometime, until then I need to get back to repeating the old mantra list "I see place X, I am dreaming", etc. These things do take a while to sink in, and I have noticed that the more you practice this, the more it sticks with your subcon and at some point you will start catching these more often. By the way I do get a lot of lds in my ex place, so this has to be working (that or awareness).

A question: What sort of RC are you using in RL and in dreams - the same?
Which exactly?
I do not "trust" the more inconspicuous ones, if it is about is it really a dream?.

I should really be spending more time RCing than I actually do, because I don't get to do too many in lds, rather simply know I am dreaming, or spot something weird or DS. When I did do a lot of them, I would get many DILDs.

My daily RCs have gone from checking the features on my hands (which did transfer to dreams, but proved rather unrealiable for me because I had learned them so well, they were very similar in the dream), reading something (also transfered a number of times, that RC's pretty cool, so I still do it from time to time), recently I moved to telekinesis and nose plug, but again, need to increase the frequency of those to get better results. By the way, there's no rule that says you can't do more than one. Just the more consistent you are, the better the results.

Most of the times, when I become lucid I don't do an RC because I know it's a dream, however I would RC in the dream whenever there is doubt about the situation.

DCs in dreams can be very distracting, so doing the nose plug as a reminder is a really good idea. Another way would be to repeat to yourself that this is a dream and maybe remind yourself of some goals.

Finally some little bit of lucid dream-time!!
These TOTMs seem really to be number one motivation at my present stage - so thankful for this!!

Two Short Lucids with Snowman-Efforts - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Same old wacky approach - alarm clock after 6 h - this time I managed to get myself out of bed for almost half an hour - and so I was for a change not lazy and un-determined with my efforts.
Only problem - still unsure about which exact WILD approach to take - I mix things up at the moment - and - like usual - didn´t work.
But I found like this a very enjoyable state of relaxed - quite detached contemplation.
Been lying there for quite some time and thought about real life stuff - maybe I even got something out of it!

Then later I fell asleep and had one normal dream - woke up - toilet - back to bed and when the dream started - I knew it instantly.
No reality checks needed - also on re-entry of the first episode.
Seems I have a tendency to spontaneous hovering - on top of knowing it instantly - not bad for a sign.

Yupp - again - very good daytime-memory access - did my planned stabilization stuff and went right for the snowman in the next LD-dreamlet.
Very happy about the nice snow I got to come down - by shouting out, that I want it - that´s a first - summoning something.
If it had not been so late after so much sleep - it might have been more stable and long, I think.
So - next round snowman is on the plan once more - I didn´t get it alive in the last few seconds - it only started melting..

Time for this guy again:

Awesome! Congrats on the lds, Steph!

Really cool with the meadow tasting stabilization and also making it snow, and especially the snow on the kids' heads.

Hehe - thank youu!
Yeah - they sat there as the most convenient source of building-material..

Hi NyxCC!!
Thank you for commenting on my last before last night!!



Forgot to link through - this time I do: Mini-DILD Again - And First Time Being Male - Singing Like An Opera Tenor - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

I am very pleased, that DILDs are happening on their own seemingly now - even if these unprepared ones are no good for almost nothing - with sparsest daytime memory and little control.
But them just appearing is a good sign, I think.

Also - I was male for a while - maybe a first even in my life - surely the first I remember!
And to make it better - I had the voice of an opera-tenor!!
Other interesting bodily differences went unfortunately unexplored, though..

Hey that's so good! Congrats! You really are on fire, keep it up!

The tenor non-ld part was super cool! A lot dream control and great ideas come from non-lds. And now that you've done amazing stuff like this, it opens the gate to more possibilities. Music in dreams and lucid dreams is absolutely awesome. You can make it come out of nowhere or anywhere, have your DCs sing or even stage entire concerts. Makes me want to go to bed and ld right now!

Ooh - didn´t work..
I made a variation, which did no good.
Thinking that the WILD had never worked, because I got impatient with not falling asleep, while lying on my back and going about it.
So I thought, I´d try the whole process lying on my stomach turned to the left side - how I usually sleep.
Well - yupp - I fell asleep just fine - but without noticing and taking my consciousness with me.
Grrr.
Naja - this night again and on the back..
Also got smashed my recall for more than the one dream just before my WBTB by the doorbell ripping me out of bed - and I had to deal with a repair-guy, for whom my husband had made a date, and didn´t tell me.

Hi NyxCC!
I feel a motivation surge at the moment - did just journal a lot - and with goals and and..
Got to tumble towards bed soon - so I link up and will maybe edit in a bit more later:
Very Nice That Last Night Counted - 3 Points - Quite Happy! - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views
One important thing - how can I learn to recognize my most frequent dream-signs and DCs - even if I do not come across them irl any more?
That would be so fantastic..
goodsigh2.gif

That's great Steph, competitions can be really helpful for both recall and ld motivation.

One important thing - how can I learn to recognize my most frequent dream-signs and DCs - even if I do not come across them irl any more?

Well, one thing that I have done was to set up a list, broad categories as well as concrete examples, for example school, classmates - their names (obviously this is for private use ), places, people, animals, actions - like climbing, flying, etc. So this is the list of major DS and I have it printed so go over it whenever I feel like, but it would be best if at least once a day. I like to combine this with a mantra, I see X, I realize that I am dreaming. At some point I have memorized most of the list and can recite this as a poem. Actually, you can go creative about it and put them all in a poem or a song. I have been able to catch a number of DS, although I still get a miss on some key items, but I think with more practice, you can train to recognize these with better consistency.

So, list is one thing. Another is to use flashcards, maybe you can add some pics there too, especially if you go for a digital flashcard app. Finally, there's the classic mild thing, where you remember a dream with the DS and imagine yourself becoming lucid upon seeing it. You can do this during the day, pre bed, wbtb, etc.

Thank you - great advice!!

Whooop Whoop - DiSchnuuhup!!

Finally Lucid Again - Being Hugged And Swirled And Keeping Eyes Closed TOTM - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

So happy - got myself a pair of wiings last night - thank you so much for all your help!!

Congrats on the ld, Steph! That's such a nice execution of the basic task! Honestly, I don't even dare trying it, as I am fearful it might mess up the dream. Good to have people here brave enough to do it and successfully too!

Thank youu!
It was so that I felt very nice, when I accidentally closed my eyes - and I somehow knew I would "survive" ten seconds - or even a bit more maybe.
Stupidly - I expected to wake up after I had seen the dream again - that it doesn´t go on after that confirmation - and yepp. Surely.
But I am really so happy - when it started out so nice - and then nothing for a whole week - I was starting doubtful thoughts - good these are put to some peace now!!

Banish all doubts. Your practice is really paying off! Keep up the good work!

Bit silly - but I find these wings fit my cat so nicely..
I can look at them - and say - yepp - I do LDing!

I´m on a roll - soo happy - did it again:

Lucid - Again No Animated Snowman - But Some Fun With Summoning - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Stupid doorbell kept me from building my snowman - and I forgot about the order of stuff to do for the comp - but summoning seems to work just fine!
First I summoned a naked beau - and "disappointed" him, by asking for a present suddenly - I did have other plans initially - he did not like the question and stalked off back around his corner.

Probably I DEILDed in some way into the second part - not sure there - maybe I just lost lucidity shortly..?

And in that second part - the snow-summoning was working veery much better and faster this time.
Not by shouting out something - but by seeing something fitting - a birch tree - and convincing myself it would be snow on the branches, and it would be snowing back there - super results - happy Steph!!