Fuzzman's Workbook

I love the idea of the Academy courses! I think this will definitely help keep me interested in getting into LDing :)
Here's my basics,

Reality Checks:
When dream sign occurs
- Location
- Memory
- Hands
- Awareness of surroundings

Dream Signs:
- Whenever I'm not aware
- Girlfriend / Roommates
- My house
- Video games or a gaming type of feel in the dream
- Any bizarre events or unfamiliar locations (during the day I imagine them or exaggerate oddities for practice)

Short-Term Goals:
- Four LDs a week
- Manipulate an object (size, color, etc.)
- Change the dream scene

Long-Term Goals:
- One LD a day
- Develop a dream HQ that will be a personal dream practice playground
- Get proficient with superpowers (telekinesis, flying, magic, etc.)

Lucid/Dream Recall History:
- A few short lucid dreams over the past few years since learning about it
- Since this year after wanting to get back into it I have had 2
- As of now I can only remember maybe 5 dreams per week

Current Technique:
- ADA / SAT
- Meditation



Typical sleep schedule: 11 PM - 7 AM

Why I want to lucid dream:
- To improve on aspects of my waking life (creativity, awareness, and memory)
- Inspiration for ideas or for practicing certain skills
- and for fun, duh :P

Routine:
- Before bed I look over my recent journal entries
- I review the events of the past day from right before bed all the way back to morning to help improve my memory and practice how it would be to remember dream events
- Tell myself I will remember my dreams and be lucid in them as I fall asleep



Homework

Lesson 1:
[x] Start Workbook
[x] Have a dream journal
[x] Sleep/Wake times
[x] Reality Checks
[x] Why I want to lucid dream
[x] Routine
(Optional)
[ ] DV Journal
[ ] Snippets
[x] Awareness
[x] Dream Signs

Lesson 2:
[x] Pick a technique
[x] Practice for 2 weeks
[x] Post experiences
(Optional)
[x] Discuss technique
[ ] Choose second induction
[ ] WBTB routine



That's all for now, I'll update it as I progress with it :)
Thanks for looking!

Had a near miss in one of my dreams last night, one of my goals for when I become lucid is simple manipulation like changing the color of an object. I was walking somewhere in my dream and thought to myself "If this was a dream, I could change the color of that door" and when I thought about the door changing color nothing happened so I continued on. It's great that that kind of stuff is showing up more often but frustrating how close I was :angry: There were also a couple other times where something seemed off but I would quickly be distracted by what was going on in the dream.

I notice my recall is definitely improving from practicing with memory exercises and that my dreams are beginning to develop more of a story rather than just random bits and pieces. Working with ADA is starting to significantly help with overall awareness while awake which is carrying over into dreams, I think that with a couple more weeks of practice I'll get the hang of it more and begin having some real lucids :) I just need to be sure to stick to my routine of becoming aware first while asking myself if I'm dreaming, then doing reality checks, and I need to be sure that I am diligent about it and not just brushing it off too quickly.

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Originally Posted by Fuzzman

I just need to be sure to stick to my routine of becoming aware first while asking myself if I'm dreaming, then doing reality checks, and I need to be sure that I am diligent about it and not just brushing it off too quickly.

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Read the ADA (all day awareness) guide by Yoshi. Can't post links unfortunately. It helped me get a lucid the day I tried it. Also Dream Yoga for beginners. I became lucid without doing a reality check. Things seemed weird and it just clicked. 2 years ago I tried lucid dreaming for 2 months until i gave up. I gave up due to lack of success. I resumed 3 days ago and got my first lucid. I think being aware of your surroundings is more important than doing the check itself.

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Originally Posted by Lucidordie

Read the ADA (all day awareness) guide by Yoshi.

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Yeah I've been following ADA/SAT for the past week or so and it has definitely helped. While awake I do the steps correctly by becoming aware and then checking, the main problem was that in the dream I didn't do things in the right order, I just went straight to checking reality by manipulating an object but then got caught up in the dream and never become aware. I haven't been practicing for very long but already seeing progress pretty quickly so I think after a few more weeks of practicing it while awake I'll have it down and it'll carry over correctly into my dreams.

No luck over the past few nights, weekends aren't too great for my dream recall, too much drinking :P But hopefully that means there will be some nice REM rebound over the next couple days. My daily practices are getting a lot easier, I'm able to be more aware during the more focus demanding tasks and I'm picking out my dream signs better, so I'm hopeful that I'll have a good LD sometime this week!

Another near miss last night, I can feel it getting closer :) I had a false awakening and remembered that I should reality check when waking up so I pinched my nose. I was quickly distracted by dream content though and don't even remember if I tried to breathe through it. I can tell it's getting more often during dreams that I feel like something is off and like I'm about to question it but mostly I get distracted by something else immediately.

Attempted WBTB this morning but I ended up not being able to get back to sleep for like an hour and then I needed to get up anyway. Couldn't recall any dreams before that, hopefully that means tonight will be more vivid with some REM rebound.

So many close calls lately, it's frustrating but at the same time exciting!

In my dream last night I was on a small powered raft but it was like being in a car, there were other people in the raft with me and there were other rafts around us waiting at a stoplight at a river intersection. Somehow I ended up being thrown from the raft before the light turned green and I was under someone else's propeller. I was underwater and noticed I could breathe which was cool, but I was afraid of them accelerating and chopping me up so I told myself I needed to wake up out of the dream to be okay so I started closing my eyes and thrashing around trying to wake up, scared that I wouldn't be able to before being killed. It wasn't until everything started going black that I realized I could have just been lucid and changed the scene or something :P

After waking up I couldn't recall much other than that, but I had a strong feeling that my other dreams were amazing and that I had just forgotten them. I feel like my awareness practices are really helping to make my dreams more vivid and story-like, but I know I need to start focusing more heavily on recall because lately it hasn't been too great. I'm going to start do day recall more often for practice and recite that I will remember my dreams before bed instead of saying that I will be lucid.

No lucidity yet, but my recall is improving greatly. I had been smoking weed hoping that I could still make progress without quitting but decided to cut it out because it's just slowing me down. It's been a few days since smoking and last night I remembered one of the longest and most vivid dreams I've had in quite a while, and it was pretty linear too, not just fragments. So I've decided to just quit smoking completely to focus only on dreaming since it's losing it's thrill anyway, and I know lucid dreaming sounds so much more rewarding :) I think over the next few days I'll start making some great progress, at least with recall.

I had a bunch of false awakenings last night, like 6 or 7 maybe. After a few of them I started to catch on but whenever I'd think about how it might be a dream I'd wake up again and then go about it until I started realizing it again. Woke up before I got a chance to be fully lucid. Going to try to start working on more RCs when I wake up.

Recall is going nuts now, I remembered maybe 3 or 4 dreams last night. One of them was within the same REM period but there were 2 distinct parts to it. Getting better at waking up naturally after dreams too and also finding it easier to fall back asleep afterwards which is good :P don't want to lose out on my sleep.

Had another close call during one of the dreams, something was happening and I had the thought about dreaming and figured that it would be a good time to be aware, but of course there was something to distract me. I need to work on my practices more during the day and be sure I notice my surroundings as well as possible even if there is stuff going on.

My daily practices are going great, awareness is almost constant except for when I'm on the computer or talking with someone, but even then I am starting to have moments where I remember to keep it up, I feel like it's just a matter of time before it starts being translated into my dreams to help me become lucid.

I don't really like the idea of doing physical reality checks often so I'm working on primarily just doing location and memory checks, and after that I try to reaffirm that I could be dreaming for a few minutes and remind myself to be aware.

I've been incorporating reality checking when I wake up by becoming aware of my surroundings and wondering where I am, this is the rare time where I will do a physical reality check by pinching my nose or looking at my clock. It seems like for a few minutes after waking up from sleep my mind tries to resist the importance of dreaming and occasionally I brush off my practices, I'm hoping this becomes easier over time to make it instinctive.

I'm a little discouraged that I haven't had any LDs in a while but I'm reminding myself that all my practices are leading up to making it a lifelong skill that I intend to master and I can't expect results so soon. Also I'm looking on the bright side that my dreams are becoming more vivid and story-like and that recall is improving, which is hugely important to the skill overall.

So for a couple nights I've been experimenting with plain Salvia Divinorum leaf to boost my dreams and last night I had a good result with it! I smoked some in a bong and chewed a leaf, then kept it in my cheek when I went to sleep. My first two REM periods of the night were definitely more vivid than usual, even more so than dreams that are later in the night, which is an awesome sign of how well it works. The first dream I almost became lucid and the second one I actually did get lucid! I had a false awakening right after, but ended up doing a kind of DEILD from it where I was still lucid for a little while before being startled awake by something in the dream.

I'm not planning on doing this often but I wanted to test it out anyway and I am really happy with the results. For now I intend to focus just on regular practice without supplements because I don't want to rely on them. But it did feel good having a lucid since I haven't in so long, and definitely reinvigorated my interest even more!

Awareness is starting to show up more often in my dreams. Last night I took a moment to become aware of my surroundings but it didn't get me lucid, even though I was on some type of alien spaceship :P Need to start incorporating my location and memory reality checks more often when I remember to become aware. The last few nights I've seen some good signs so I'm really hopeful to start making some great progress soon.

I've been diligently working on this for a little over two months now since getting back into LDing with a couple close calls but no huge success. After reading through some stuff I'm realizing I may have been going about doing ADA the wrong way by not including enough self-awareness in the practice and just sticking to outer awareness. Don't get me wrong, the practice has been great on my recall and last night I think I had the first dream where I remembered nearly every single event in it which is great, but I'm not feeling any closer to lucidity. So now I'm going to start working on trying to stay mindful and in the present moment as much as possible throughout the day and keep track of what's going on in my mind and body as well as being critical of what is going on around me at all times. I'll also be doing at certain moments throughout the day some inner reality checks by thinking of where I am, what I'm doing, and reviewing what I've done for the past few minutes, and maybe also a physical reality check if possible.

I also found a technique called Lucid Day Dreaming which seems promising so I'm going to try a version of that out as well. What I plan to do is review my journal often, especially before bed, and visualize my most recent, memorable dreams, and instead of playing it out how it happened I want to try changing the memory so that I actually became lucid in the dream and proceed with the dream as if that had happened, so I will kind of be practicing becoming lucid by visualizing that it happened. I figure since dreams are just very vivid visualization, that I'll actually be sort of rewiring my brain to be lucid more often by visualizing my dreams as being lucid. I'll also be doing this whenever I catch myself in a daydream or if I'm otherwise not focused on being in the present.

If anyone reads this and has a thought about it, does this seem logical or will I be wasting my time with it?

Hey Fuzzman!

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So now I'm going to start working on trying to stay mindful and in the present moment as much as possible throughout the day and keep track of what's going on in my mind and body as well as being critical of what is going on around me at all times. I'll also be doing at certain moments throughout the day some inner reality checks by thinking of where I am, what I'm doing, and reviewing what I've done for the past few minutes, and maybe also a physical reality check if possible.

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Your conclusions and resolutions seem to be in the right direction. There's quite of a debate about the direction of awareness - external vs internal and I think one should be paying attention to both. That is, don't just mindlessly move from one place to another without acknowledging the surroundings and quality of detail, yet combine this with self awarness. What you have written in the quote above is very well said and what I would have advised as well.

I also like the idea of lucid day dreaming, remembering past dreams and changing them where you are lucid (this is a form of MILD). Regarding dreams as visualization and using visualization in general has lots of good applications including improving dream control, stability and preparing one to become lucid.

So, great strategy and I wish you best of luck with the implementation. :goodjob:

So strangely as if by some random fate, I'm reading a book called Psycho-Cybernetics and early in it on the chapter I just read, Maltz talks about taking almost exactly what I was describing in my last post to learn to lucid dream, and applying that concept to almost any area in life that you want to improve on. He says that by visualizing yourself as already having achieved the goal your striving for in vivid detail every day, your brain will lock onto that goal and your automatic success mechanism will subconsciously take steps to help you achieve it. I guess this should be fairly obvious and I'm sure some people mention similar things on here about lucid dreaming, but I think it is a really interesting and reassuring coincidence that I read about it in this book on the same day I decide to start applying it to LDing.

I think I had a brief moment of lucidity last night, but it's only the faintest of memories that I couldn't remember fully. It kind of felt like my visualization practices where I was just imagining lucidity, but I still consider it a success and a reason for me to keep working with the practice. I'm noticing that I'm becoming more present within my dreams too which feels really awesome, like I'm actually there and in the moment rather than just waking up to random memories that don't feel real. It's giving more fluidity to my dreams as well instead of broken pieces that don't go together. All in all I think that what I'm doing is the way I should go about it, I just need to be more effective in my daytime practices. Lately my recall has been suffering some because I usually end up drinking in the evening with my friends (end of semester, woohoo! :cheeky: ) but I'm going to cut back on that soon which should help a lot.

Looks like you're on the right track, good to hear there are such improvements in the dream state. Also congrats on the mini-ld, a very good sign indeed! :)

Thanks NyxCC! Yeah I'm enjoying the progress with this so far, I think visualizing is really helping. I actually had an interesting moment last night as well, I was feeling upset about something that had happened earlier in the dream and then I thought to myself "Well that was just a dream so I guess I shouldn't worry about it anyway." For a moment after thinking that I sat there and thought about it like "wait....what?" but then kind of dismissed it and went on with the dream. I wouldn't consider that being lucid but it was pretty interesting, I guess I didn't think about how there could be a kind of retro-lucidity where I realize something earlier was a dream.

It's a really cool thing, I've had it happen a number of times too - we make conclusions like this and know that the previous dream was a dream. I suspect deep down we always know we are dreaming, but how to reach that knowledge?! I also take it as positive indicator because these things tend to occur more often when we have our mind set on lding. And on this particular occasion you were even closer because you started wondering. :)

Man I was so close this morning, I'd almost consider it a success. I was having a nightmare (really rare for me) that a killer was hiding out in my house, I woke up from it, did some quick RCs to make sure, then laid back down. When I was laying down I started just visualizing some stuff from the dream and then eventually I was back in it with a false awakening (didn't RC this time unfortunately :roll:).

I got out of bed and went to my kitchen, I tried the light switch but it didn't work and I told myself the killer must have shut off the power. But somehow in the back of my mind I just knew it was a dream and was trying to bring that thought out fully but I was too scared of the killer to really think straight. I actually did do my mental RC at this point but because I just "woke up" they made sense, I checked location which was my kitchen, and then memory which was just waking up. I was still skeptical so I looked at my hands but it was too dark to really see them clearly. There was still a strong feeling that I was in a dream but it's like it kept going back and forth between lucid and not lucid. "There's a killer somewhere here", "Well it's a dream so he couldn't hurt me anyway", "But if it's not really a dream I could die" and just back and forth like that. I felt confused and eventually I woke up from it for real (did a nose plug RC this time to be sure haha), I wanted to go back but I had moved so it was difficult, then I needed to get up to get ready for work anyway.

Even though this is kind of a partial success, I think I had some new experiences that make me excited. For one, this is the first time I've consciously slipped back into a dream so easily before which was really neat. Also, because of my day practices of living in the moment and being mindful, when I was having that half-lucid moment everything felt so real and as if I was controlling my actions, not just watching myself on auto-pilot. So even though I wouldn't say I got fully lucid, I'd still consider this my best lucid dream yet just because of how I felt like I was actually there, super excited to get some more!
:giraffe:

Had a quick moment of lucidity this morning after falling back asleep. In the dream I was on campus and I saw my girlfriend, so I went up to say hey and then realized it wasn't her. Somehow this immediately made me realize I was dreaming, I didn't even have to reality check but I went through a quick mental check anyway. I didn't recognize my location and when I tried to remember what I was just doing I could clearly recall falling back asleep so I knew it was a dream. After a couple seconds my vision started to fade, maybe from focusing too much on thinking, and I thought I was waking up but I remained calm and remembered to just try to immerse myself in the dream. I was on a bike so I started to look at it and touch the handle bars and after a few seconds my vision came back (first time that's happened, was really cool :)). I started observing my surroundings and everything looked so real, I felt like I was really there and couldn't believe I was in a dream. I haven't set up any real goal yet other than just try to stay in the dream and get used to exploring in it, and it felt like there was so much to notice I kinda just stood there in disbelief, taking it all in until I woke up after maybe 30 seconds. Really short, but I'm super stoked about it because of just how amazing it felt to really be there and in the moment.

Nice! Congrats! :) Well done getting your vision back and taking time to immense in the dream! If you're looking for ideas of things to do we have the tasks of month and year. New ones for June will be out soon too.

Tasks of the Month & Year

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Originally Posted by NyxCC

Nice! Congrats! :) Well done getting your vision back and taking time to immense in the dream! If you're looking for ideas of things to do we have the tasks of month and year. New ones for June will be out soon too.

Tasks of the Month & Year

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Yeah I am looking forward to doing some tasks soon, but right now I'm trying to take baby steps with it and just keep it simple :P I want to make sure I get comfortable with getting lucid before attempting too much. Mostly, first I want to just explore my dream scene and interact with the objects and such. I hadn't really focused too much on that yet because I still needed to get lucid, but after last time I'm gonna work on keeping a simple goal in mind too.

I had some minor lucidness this morning after doing a WBTB. The first memory I could recall of the dream was being in a random house and I already knew I was dreaming, I can't remember how I realized it but I just knew it. I was looking around for a bit and then things started losing detail and my vision was disappearing, I figured I was waking up. I ended up having a false awakening that at the time I thought was real but in it I laid back down to try to go back into another dream. I randomly started visualizing some kind of pixelated top-down image of castles on floating islands, then eventually I ended up in a dream where I was outside the front of a castle with my girlfriend and an old man, and we were about to fight some enemies. In the back of my mind I knew it was a dream but it didn't fully click what that meant at the time, so I didn't really consider any goals and just went along with the dream. I think we fought some kind of goblin creatures but it felt more like I was just thinking about it and visualizing rather than it actually happening. I end up in some street with my girlfriend and I look up, seeing a plane that I think is also an enemy to fight, and I wonder how I'm gonna attack it. I figure since it's a dream that I could shoot a fireball at it, and spend a lot of time trying to summon one and eventually I wake up. Never did end up making it work :(

So that was pretty cool, it didn't feel very lucid but somewhere in my mind I knew I was dreaming so that's good. Also since today is the last day of the month and I got lucid, that brings me to 3 lucid dreams for this month where the past few months I've just had one :)

Two nights in a row woohoo! :woohoo: This one was more lucid than the last, but it was a bit annoying because for the first minute or so of it I felt drunk and it seemed like one of my eyes was messed up. It was hard to move around and I didn't really have any idea what to do about it. I tried to just ignore it and focus on figuring out how to fly and eventually it went away. I was indoors so I couldn't really figure out how to fly but I did float for a few seconds, then tried to find a way to go out a window but it took too long. At one point when I was finding a way to get outside, a dream character came to talk to me and ask me to help him with something, I almost went along with it but then I was like "wait you're not real, go away" which seemed to make him sad :( I woke up shortly after that but I think this is probably one of the longest times I've spent lucid, maybe like 2-3 minutes worth I'd assume. I like how calm I am when I get lucid now, it's like it's no big deal and I think that makes it easier to stay in the dream.

Also something else really interesting happened that I've heard of but never experienced before. At the end when I woke up, I guess I opened my eyes while still dreaming and I could see the dream superimposed on what I was seeing in my room. Slowly the dream faded and I could only see my room but it was pretty trippy to see two things at once and have the dream visuals morph into my real vision.

Fantastic Fuzzman! Congrats on your recent success! Seems like you feel more comfortable in lds now and also figure a good way to solve issues if they arise. Nice! :D

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Unfortunately my dream ended after about a minute as my wife woke me up with a sudden movement; need to try and work on ignoring exterior distractions. I want to tell myself to ignore the physical world, but I'm worried if I think of that then reverse-psychology will imply that I then think of my body in bed and wake up!

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Man, that's so cool! I don't think I've experience this after an ld - only from midnight wake up from deep sleep mostly. I got some crazy shaking after ld once - it was as if a real person was trying to wake me up, but there was no one there (tactile hypnopompic that is). :holyshit:

I think you may have accidentally responded to the wrong person with the second part, because that isn't a quote from me :P

Oops! Shame on me! :oops: Didn't double check the copy paste. My reply is still valid though, it was to a quote from you. This is how it should have looked.

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Originally Posted by Fuzzman

Also something else really interesting happened that I've heard of but never experienced before. At the end when I woke up, I guess I opened my eyes while still dreaming and I could see the dream superimposed on what I was seeing in my room. Slowly the dream faded and I could only see my room but it was pretty trippy to see two things at once and have the dream visuals morph into my real vision.

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Man, that's so cool! I don't think I've experienced this after an ld - only from midnight wake up from deep sleep mostly. I got some crazy shaking after ld once - it was as if a real person was trying to wake me up, but there was no one there (tactile hypnopompic that is)

^^ It's quite weird how my reply could be read as referring to the other quote as well. :lol:

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Originally Posted by NyxCC

^^ It's quite weird how my reply could be read as referring to the other quote as well. :lol:

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Hahah yeah I wasn't sure who it was a response to, it confused me. But yeah it was a really trippy experience, seeing dreams with my eyes open. Really quite neat though, I liked it and hope it happens more often :P