RebarGold's Workbook

RebarGold's Workbook
(because it needed a flashier title)

Hey, everyone! Or no one...Wow, that's a depressing thought.
Moving on from that, my workbook will my pet project for a while. I'll, hopefully, start an online dream journal as well and connect this to it for the most part. There will be probably be a lot of completely filler information just to make everything look pretty and make sure I can easily replicate a situation if it succeeds.

Reality Checks:
-*-
Biting the tips of both thumbs. This one was an accident.
Reciting the periodic table backwards while standing on one foot.
Re-reading a sentence after a moment of pause.
Practicing currently.


Dream Signs:
-*-
Markings on the back of my left hand.
Being awesome. My bad, that's my natural state.
Unrealistic environments or events.

Short-Term Goals:
-*-
Lucid dream 3 times for every 10 attempts.
Lucid dreams routinely lasting longer than a dream hour.
Stabilize and increase clarity.
One successful WILD and DEILD.


Long-Term Goals:
-*-
Lucid dream 8 times for every 10 attempts.
Lucid dreams routinely last multiple dream hours.
Find the easiest way to lucid dream for me.
Master DILD.


Lucid/Dream Recall History:
-*-
Oh, man, a lot. I have a few amazing lucid dreams that have stayed with me since my single-digit ages, and my mind is riddled with dreams that surface randomly when I'm writing or just walking around. I used to have dreams every night and achieve lucid status in most of them and have immaculate recollection, but that tapered off.
Examples:
|> My dark room with the chair and red-eyed shadow spirit. Not going to go into depth.
|> A beast tale about a person(me?) overthrowing a small kingdom and using magical armor to awaken a dragon encased in stone. This dream felt like it took weeks, even with the intermittent memory pacing.
|> A quidditch match in(not at, IN) Hogwarts. Where's the instant replay on lucid dreams? Seriously, come on guys!
And a lot more...


Current Technique:
-*-
DILD and a random technique whose name I know not: Basically, I go to sleep with an image or a movie-like thing going on in my head and my dreams will naturally pick it up and while I generally don't know I'm dreaming unless I ask myself the precise question, I can still exert control and full lucidity. Does that even make sense?
I fall asleep around 2400 and wake up around 6000 or 1300. (That broad enough?)
My routine consists of chilling in bed watching a funny British stand-up show and reading/writing a book for an hour before going to sleep. Maybe even some quiet time to just absorb all the dreams if I'm feeling good that day.


Random stuff no one should read:
-*-
My dreams aren't ordinary, so my DILD kicks in almost immediately. I'm never going through the motions of every-day life and the closest I ever got to mundane was hunting giant packs of werebears like it was deer season. I also rarely interfere or directly control my dreams as my subconscious does quite a nice job of creating interesting stories and plot-lines, though I normally control my singular being.
My subconscious is very dark and brooding. Ye hath been warned.

Why I want to lucid dream:
-*-
Briefly: It's awesome. I've always been into video games and books because I can experience things that, frankly, I will never be able to in my real life. Lucid dreaming sounds far more engaging than the best of games and I can control it quite easily even when my subconscious wants to throw its plot-twists in.

So I had a dream. Or two. Depends on how you want to count it, I guess.
They were basic DILD's: My head hit the pillow, my dream kicked up and my awareness kicked in. I didn't do anything special other than STEALING PILLOWS and relaxing for about a half hour before bed. The other lucid dream before this I had relaxed for a good while as well, so my dreaming may have to do with stress levels.
The first dream part I had was on a train with its own special color scheme and the other one was just hunting. Awesomely. On a wolf.

/blogs/rebargold/bronzy-gold-blue-train-hunting-dogs-53372/

Me so sneaky.

I got sick. There's this pain in my throat glands that kept waking me up from my dreams, and I remembered all of them. They were pretty short, unfortunately, but completely unrelated, so I guess they count as five lucid dreams(and one non-lucid). One DILD/MILD, two WILD's and two DEILD's. God, I'm exhausted. The link to my DJ will show up eventually.

http://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/reba...-dreams-53430/

I keep my promises. Sometimes.

DILD seems a good one to pick, especially as I've done it a few times. Refining skills is always fun, and I can't really stop my DILD if I'm aiming for LD's.
I'd like to try MILD and Dream Yoga at the same time as well, but I'm not completely sure about either one. MILD seems to link very well with DILD and Dream Yoga, but WILD'ing seems fun too.
Help? :panic:

You know, the cool thing about DILD, and I think you were basically saying it, is that it can happen whether or not you focus on it. DILD's really increase in frequency as you practice more awareness during the day. So DILDs don't take away from focusing on other methods at all.

If you want to try dream yoga, then I definitely recommend getting with Sivason, since I don't really know anything about it. He teaches a class on it, so you can check it out sometime: Dream Yoga

WILDs are a completely different animal than DILD/MILD. If you do decide to go that route, hit me up about it. I have gone from not even knowing wtf it was, to knowing what it is but having no clue how to do it, to knowing how to do it but sucking at it, to knowing how to do it kinda good. (Learners make the best teachers, in my opinion.)

So, read up on all the methods and decide for yourself. Choice is yours of course, depending on your personal pref, sleep schedules etc

I didn't really want to deal with lucid dreaming last night. I pretty much turned all my facilities off so I could try to get a lot of restful sleep for both my body and mind. It worked sort of...I feel a lot better today, but I still had a few dreams caught(My subconscious knew I was lying to myself! :shock:). I woke up around 15 times this last night, and I doubt I missed any dreams on a couple sleeping sequences due to how short I slept. About 45 minutes at a time. I sleep around ten hours in full, though.
They were all lucid, all 9 dream fragments. Nine. I'm just counting them as one lucid dream.

http://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/reba...agments-53440/

Aaaah! No! I've been gone! Horrible, I know. Everyone noticed and was SO worried. lol...That was a really depressing laugh...At my own loneliness and despair...I'm alone....And I kind of want to eat someone's face.

OK! ANYHOW! Bananas are my dream drug. Or placebo. I'm not sure, but I ate a banana and I dreamed three times in a single night. -score-
I had another long dream which I THINK was a WILD without having to wake up in the middle of the night, but that dream felt like it took forever. The cool part was when I woke up for a little while, then went immediately back to sleep in the same dream precisely where I left off. Oyus...It was awesome.
I'm not even going to bother putting this in my DJ.
I dreamed about being in a huge crowd and throwing oranges and apples at manikins in suits standing on a political stand. That's my whole rebellious nature, as those Freudian junkies would say.
The second dream in that first night was cooler: This was completely in first person (most of my dreams aren't) and I had this strange orange-ish vision. I could see where people had been, like where they had walked and I saw their "auras/natures" or something. I thought that was pretty cool, and I just walked around observing the world and it's people. However, about mid-way through the dream something happened. It's kinda private...NO! NOT THAT WAY! GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTERS, PEOPLE! Aaaand, it let a whole flood of emotions out. :roll: Overrated.
The third dream was also very long. I went hunting for deer in modern days(with a RIFLE for all those who dun' know what people hunt with) and my friend threw it on a pickup truck. Which I drove. Fast. Over a gigantic, impossibly steep hill, and went flying through the air. I got a dream adrenaline rush. Then we ran from cops. Then we got in a fight with crazy old people in a worn-down shack where we camped. Then we got into an illegal hunting ring for giant mammoths in order to feed poor people who were being oppressed. Then we attacked the mayor's house to free the town. And then I just jumped that huge hill a gabillion times until I woke up.
The next night I had this really strange dream of being a wizard-like? I got the vibe it was Harry Potter based (I was trying to do HIT as I often do, but I was so tired I gave up in the middle of it...That's why it's butchered I guess.) but not in Hogwarts or around any characters. I had been trying to get to the Hogwarts sorting hat and figure out where I, truly and without bias, thought I would belong, but that didn't work out so I ran around talking to snakes (which I think meant I belonged in Slytherin? I dunno...) which was awesome and I was searching for what I think was the Deathly Hallows. I can't remember what it precisely was but I know there were three parts and I thought they were awesome.
I'm eating a :banana: tonight and using HIT to get to that sorting hat. I shall know this, if it's the only dream I have that night! :offtobed:

To be completely fair, talking to snakes could also put you in Gryffindor. :teeth:

Well those were some amazing dreams! Cool that you got that 1st person one, since you mentioned the 3rd person dreams a lot. Quick question though, what did you mean by "I had another long dream which I THINK was a WILD without having to wake up in the middle of the night." Did you WILD within a dream? JW because I've been reading about a lot of those lately. Plus I think we just talked about it too. Anyway, glad the banana seemed to work. Something about that b6. Hope it's not just a Placebo, or I have to delete half the forum.

Happy dreaming, and I replied to your PM too btw. Finally. I worked several days in a row, including a clopen (where you close one night, get 24 minutes of sleep, then open the next morning, which is obviously early when it's for a bakery). Then last night, I combined 2 things that no one in their right mind should ever do, and it caused me to go into a coma until 4pm. So I had a little catching up to do around here. I'm happy though that catching up includes reading anything you write, because it's always entertaining.

I actually pulled all-nighter. Well, two. I'm on the verge of collapsing right now, but with a red bull in one hand and chocolate bar in the other I should be able to ward off sleep until I'm ready. I need to catch up too! And I hope my recall isn't damaged, because that would suck. Meh, I'll eat two bananas in case.
It wasn't a WILD within a dream, I just transitioned to a dream while keeping my awareness like CanisLucidus said earlier in the Intro Class Q&A thread. I'd like to try that, though, it sounds very....Confusing. :lol:
You do have a point about Gryffindor, but I'm wary to assume that because I think the house I fit into is Gryffindor. Pretty much everyone wants to be in Gryffindor, you know? I mean, ambition is a virtue, but to have ambition as your defining virtue just leads to questionable actions with a rather selfish motive, yet it never seems to be precisely that to the person doing it. Alright, I need to shove a sock in that now, because I could rant on about philosophy in Harry Potter for hours and hours encased in pages.
Thanks for the compliment! :D I love those things, but they're so much nicer when I don't have to drag them out of people. lol

Clopens are fun. lolno Your job sounds too demanding for me to handle. Congrats on surviving that and good luck.

Didn't have any dreams. Not thrilled about that, but I only slept a few hours. I may not have had the time to cycle through correctly. Meh, science...What is it good for?

Anyhow, I doubt tonight will be much better. Must...Get...Back...To...Sleeping...Like a diurnal mammal....

I was on vacation! It was pretty awesome, but I didn't have my dream journal or internet access so...Those dreams will be lost forever. Because I'm lazy. TOMORROW!

I didn't dream. Blegh, every single time I WANT to dream it doesn't happen. I guess the stress just freaks me out. It'll probably take a few days for my brain to ease back into it.

But for tonight...It's game time. :sniper:


:offtobed:

Still not dreaming.
&*%#

:blue:

Why not, what's going on witchoooo??

Suicide of the heart. I'll come back soon....I'm sorry.


I won't be on. I need to make use of so much less than enough time with the one I think I've loved the most. Probably will always love the most. It might be weeks or months. Probably days. It's funny when we want so many things, and just ignore our love to make room for other things, when in the end, we'd give it all up and it all back for just moments longer.
I'd been asking what might be in my mirror of Erised. I know. I so know beyond what any person should be sure of. So much.

No sorries, fast friend. Be where you need to be when you can.

AAAND I'M BACK!
KUUUZZC-Wrong song. Hold on...Mission Impossible music.
Boo-yah, baby.

So, recently I haven't been sleeping much-- go figure, and I only have a couple rather private dreams to note, three of the six which were lucid. In my defense, I didn't practice or anything: Been pretty much full of 60 hour days and three hour sleeps. But I'm getting better. Trying to get back onto a decent sleep schedule and shave my seventeen foot long beard of negligence. Definitely going to start a sleep schedule and mark whenever I do stuffz. Like sleep. And complicated stuffz like that. My dedication will be wavering, however, so expect pot-holes.
Probably start going to sleep about midnight about waking up at six. Whatever will I do with the perfect hours for my body...

Fell asleep at about 500 in the morning and didn't start moving until about ten hours later. Had a really weird dream about running around with some guy and assassinating/helping people...It was a rather long dream.

I got the dream through what I'm going to refer as HIT now and was presumably aware from the beginning all the way to the end. The dream was quite vivid, though I never realized I was dreaming so I'm unsure if it qualifies. It felt like the dream lasted a couple days, which was nice. I've noticed that whenever I have the HIT sort of dreams, I sleep a long time and I'm tired afterward, but I guess that's a decent trade-off for longer, more immersive dreaming.
Will show up in my DJ. After an unnecessarily long and unruly wait, naturally.

Hey welcome back RG!

What is HIT? HIT - Hypnagogic Imagery Technique - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views ?

Yep. I find I can influence them to a degree to get precisely what I want, and my subconscious will fill in the holes while still allowing my consciousness to exert the precise amount of control I want. It's probably the easiest way to do it, but as I said earlier, seems to have its drawbacks. For me, at least.

Man that's cool. Howie wrote that tutorial and he was one of the first mods on DV. It's interesting because reading it now, it kinda sounds like a WILD, but approached from a standpoint of meditation.

Anyway, back to what you said about being aware or not throughout the dream. When you say "aware" do you mean vivid, like superordinary colors and details, or even heightened emotions and mental acumen, yet still going on as if it were a real life scenario? Or at some point did you go "Oh SNAP! I'm dreaming!" ??

In my dreams, there's generally a pre-text of super-ordinary powers assigned to each "character" including myself. These can amplify normal senses or give me new ones, but when I know I'm dreaming everything seems to dull a tad. Generally, when I realize I am dreaming, I feel less immersed: I know whatever happens is just a dream. However, when I am in the dream and aware but not knowing, simply thinking it's a real life scenario I think I have stronger reactions. Adrenaline bouts are stronger in situations that I might just write off when I know it's a dream. Maybe that's why I'm so tired, lol. My body actually has an adrenaline rush or something. But that'd also mean working out in my sleep would be effective to a degree too! :panic:

lol Probably not.

No, I rarely realize I'm dreaming when I do this. Sometimes, but rarely. It's just an amazing real life in my head.

Would you accept HIT as a lucid dreaming technique for the Intro Class? I read on a wiki it was unconfirmed so I was wondering.

I am sleep-deprived! And I'm also restraining myself from cackling like a mongoose (Do they cackle? I dunno. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi did, didn't he?) Sooo, maybe movies aren't the best sources of inspiration...

I have faint recollections of dream shadows...A dog that runs wild when you snap a metal chain attached to his collar...An elephant kissing a monkey...Mutiny in a public bathroom...Just weird stuff that doesn't deserve a DJ spot or special recognition. I'm still typing up my weird assassin dream thingy, because it's long. It's really...Long... :insomnia:

Hmm, don't think mongooses (not mongeese, I guess) cackle. And you know recalling something is better than nothing right? Also, if you're sleep deprived, maybe you should sleep, odd concept hmm? Unless it really is insomnia, then that sucks, I know it keeps me up til like 4am or later, but then I just counterbalance by sleeping in til 3pm, so it's probably a vicious cycle really isn't it? Wow, I ask a lot of questions, although they are rhetorical. What am I saying I feel like I'm rambling, maybe I'm sleep deprived. Right, good job on the remembering of fragments or shadows I guess. And keep typing them dreams :thumbup:

I got two hours of sleep! HAPPY DANCE! Had a dream about this weird poverty town and going to a dock for shipments...And...Cutting bullets out of a hidden container...And then running around and climbing buildings....
I dunno.
OH! AND MONGOOSES CACKLE! I SAW ONE IN MY DREAM! They also go AHGRAHRGAJGHRJAGHRJHAGRJHG when you accidentally step on them.

I have insomnia. It's a side effect of weird shit. In mai BRAIN! I forgot I had one for a while.

Dream from 01-02:
Za creepiest creep assassins ever! - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Dream from 05-06:
http://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/reba...bullets-55183/

Fell asleep about 2:00 and woke up around 12:00. Nice, long sleep.
I had two lucid dreams. One was in a weird environment with a hedge-like area containing super-stealthy ninjas the erased my memory every time I got close until I stood outside while they let a ton of wild animals outside and invited me in because I WAS AWESOME!
The other one was in this giant area....With....Vibrant colors and giant robot-like stilts that stood hundreds of feet from the ground and moved really fast. And then I could fly. And there was a train. And I had weird super-powers....Like sticky-hands, super-speed, flying and walking through walls. So, yeah...Fun.

No....Dreams..... -facedesk multiple times- Whatever....They'll come back. I was sleeping in horrible times (2200-7000) ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE! It was like school on the weekends! Though I generally sleep longer during week-days.
Meh, I'm confident they'll bounce back in a little while...Should probably eat another banana in the meantime.

Had a dream about snowboarding and skateboarding in their respected Olympics. Was pretty sweet, but nothing worth putting in the DJ. I was also doing it in the name of Мать Россия, so I dunno what was up with that. Maybe it's the whole "Сделано вы переводите. подмигивание-подмигивание" thing going on. Or maybe it's Marx. Marx was cool.