AstralVagabond's Intro Class Workbook

Reality checks:
- Hand check/finger count
- Thumb through palm
- Nose pinch
- Clock check
- Gravity check

Awareness check patterns:
- Asking myself where I am
- Asking myself when I am
- Backtracking my day/asking myself where I was
- Carefully observing the scene around me (some trouble with this)
- Checking that this is normal/makes sense

Recurring dream signs:
- School/my classmates
- My family, specifically my mum and stepdad
- Unknown locations (naturally)
- Faulty machinery
- Amusement park rides
- Failing school tests/projects, getting into trouble in or being ill-prepared for school
- Seeing my (online) ex-girlfriend face-to-face
- Being inside large and insulated (with no or few windows) buildings
- Being lost or going to faraway places
- Disney World and other theme parks
- Restoring/fixing old friendships
- Public nudity
- Trains
- Field trips
- Snow (which is helpful, as I live in a tropical region)

Short-term goals (in a lucid dream):
- Change the dream scene to just the one I want
- Be in a fairly impressive position of control; use super powers
- Whatever DreamViews' current tasks of the month are
- Experiment with senses other than sight and sound, such as taste and pressure
- Create a dream scene that's more vivid than waking life
- Speak with my subconscious (in the form of a dream character)

Long-term goals:
- Have regularly occuring lucid dreams at high vividness and awareness
- Become an experienced WILD practicioner
- Do all the fun stuff in a lucid dream, essentially (be a wizard, be a God, have adventures, have super-powered battles, visit wonders of the world, visit other worlds, visit famously fictional worlds and stories, visit original worlds and stories, play video games I've already played at the perspective of a lucid dream, have variously sensual dreams, speak with the dream characters of my friends, family and celebrities, speak with my favourite fictional characters, be my favourite fictional characters, etc.)
- Speak with my subconscious on a regular basis and experience personal growth in the waking world as a result of this
- Explore how I can grow personally through lucid dreaming by other means, such as tapping into my dreaming mind's creative abilities and practicing skills in dreaming time to improve at them
- Whatever DreamViews' current Task of The Year is

Lucid/Dream Recall History:
- I remember having had several lucid dreams when I was younger; but probably never occurring within the same few months until this February.
- I first found out about the practice of deliberately inducing lucid dreams in summer of 2012 and was pretty excited about it for a while; but I wasn't willing to really commit myself to it and stopped thinking about it seriously until 2014.
- Although I listed other long-term tasks above it, the main reason for which I'm motivated to become an oneironaut is so that I can positively develop my mind and personality in waking life - because quite frankly, at the moment, these could use a lot of developing.
- However, I am by no means unattracted by the fun aspect of it am very eager to use the power of lucid dreaming to create some of the funnest, most fantastic nights I've ever had. :D
- I started getting (back?) into the lucid dreaming journey about a week before the start of February. My first dream journal entry is from the 25th of January, 2014.
- So far, as you can see by my LD count, I've only had a handful of lucid dreams; but it should be getting better soon. After all, 5 lucids per month isn't bad for a beginner, right? Riiiiight? :wink:
- My last lucid dream has been my best and most lucid one yet. I remembered several things from my short-term memory of waking life and the dream appeared visually as vivid as real life when I focused on it. It happened three nights ago but I still haven't gotten around to posting the journal entry for it here. :x I'll get to it, though...

Current techniques:
- SAT and MILD. I've attempted WBTB but it only seems to have worked once or twice - after I woke up naturally, never after artificial waking, though I've attempted this quite a few times. I've also attempted WILD several times but to no avail. And my problem with DEILDs is that, after waking up in the middle of the night, I always feel like I just want to go back to sleep and don't have the patience to work on properly executing a WILD.
- When I attempted WILD at the end of the day or before daytime naps, I usually succeeded in getting a heavy blanket feeling over my body and, on several, brief instances, felt vibrations or as if the bed was shaking or spinning. But only for a few moments and I haven't gotten any farther than that.

Oh, one more thing that I think might be noteworthy - 3 out of the 5 lucid dreams that I've had so far have been induced by - or, at least, involved - me doing the hand check/finger count reality check in my dream. The other 2 seemed to just have been randomly triggered, so I haven't used any other reality checks in the dream world except on their own, to have fun, after already realising that I was dreaming. And in every one of these dreams, my hands have looked the same - normal in colour and form but with six fingers. Always six fingers. One thumb and five others. In these dreams, I've double or triple-checked that that's how many fingers I have, as I knew right off the bat that the normal number is five and I realised what it meant if the number was different. I have not yet had a dream in which I performed this reality check and it failed to trigger lucidity. At least, not one I remember.

Also, although I have a lot of recurring dream signs listed, I'm actually not sure if I have that many that I can really rely on because most of them have only shown up two or three times so far. School and family are by far my two most frequently recurring dream signs and they're also regular elements in my waking life! And although there are some mornings where I have loads of dream recall to document, I don't always manage to come up with anything to recall. Particularly not on school days, when I have to be in such a rush to get ready and get taken there right after I wake up. I usually manage to score a few minutes for recall in the bathroom, though, so I'm usually not empty-handed.

How are you going with these goals, AstralVagabond? :)