Alrighty then...I'm back for good! I know I haven't been gone, but what I meant was that I'm back into the practice of LDing. I set those goals up earlier thinking that they would help me. But one, I haven't had time to work on LDing and two, I keep changing practices and I can't seem to stick to one. I now have time again to focus on LDing, so after about a month of on and off practicing and stressing about which practice to do, I took a step back and observed the situation.
I realized that if I ever was going to stick with a technique and become good at LDing, I was going to have to largely come up with my own practice. Now I'm not saying that I invented these techniques, because obviously I didn't, but I have finally pieced them together in a way that I like and will be able to stick with. It isn't so effort intensive that I lose motivation, but it's not so light that it doesn't do anything for me.
So anyways, on to my practice. I'm mostly just writing this down so I don't forget it, but also so then I can get some feedback on it and suggestions to make it better if it needs to be. I first looked at all of the ways to become lucid. I cam down to four things.
1. Realizing you are dreaming by noticing something odd
2. Realizing you are dreaming because a thought about dreaming pops into your head.
3. Remembering in the dream that you need to become lucid (Basically the same as number 2, but for me there is a very thin line between them, so I put them seperate)
4. Consciously entering the dream so you're already lucid
After coming up with those four things I proceeded to come up with ways to practice becoming lucid from all of them. After all, if I could master each and every one of those (and to me those are the main ways to get lucid) then I'll have a very high rate of lucidity. Mainly my practice is what you hear all around the forums and I've read about doing this for a long time on here, but I never really did it thinking that it would lead to becoming good at LDing. I think breaking it apart like I did helped me.
Starting with number 1 - Realizing you are dreaming by noticing something odd
So I thought about how I could become lucid by doing this, and I realized this is exactly what I was doing when I first started practicing Lucid Dreaming. I looked back in my workbook and noticed all I did was ADA and an RC with a mantra. I got 6-7 lucid dreams each month for the first two months, so that probably was working for me. I think I stopped doing that because I got "too much information" and was always thinking that doing a different technique would be better.
I decided that throughout the day, I would just constantly be on the lookout for anything odd going on. To go hand in hand with that, I would keep up a general awareness of things (like ADA...but less effort intensive) so I could notice odd things easier. Whenever I notice something strange I'd do a RC with a critical question of "am I dreaming?" Then I'd do a memory check and an actual RC. If I feel like it on some of the RC's, I'd imagine what I would do if I was in a dream.
2 - Realizing you are dreaming because a thought about dreaming pops into your head
This practice was very easy to come up with because it only involves on thing. I try and keep in my head all day the mantra "I realize I'm dreaming" That doesn't mean that I'm constantly saying it, but I'm holding onto that feeling of becoming lucid and that thought that I need to realize I'm dreaming. Every time I notice myself losing these thoughts, I'll just say my mantra again to the point where it just becomes second nature. It does two things in my mind. First it makes you constantly wonder if everything around you is a dream or not...and second, it gets that thought of realizing you are dreaming into your head so then in a dream you may think that and remember to realize that you're dreaming. I also say this whenever I do an RC to associate the mantra with becoming lucid.
3 - Remembering in the dream that you need to become lucid
So this is basically the same as step 2 because the mantra will hopefully pop into my thoughts in a dream and remind me to realize I'm dreaming. The reason this is another step though, is because throughout the day the "I realize I'm dreaming" mantra is also reminding me that I need to become lucid in my dreams, and I'm also doing MILD before going to bed at night which sets even stronger intentions to the fact that I need to become lucid, so then hopefully I'll remember to become lucid in a dream.
4 - Consciously entering the dream so you're already lucid
This is just WILD so I don't need to describe anything here, but I will briefly describe how I'm going to go about my night work. Before sleeping, I do a MILD. Then at any natural awakenings throughout the night I do a MILD. I'll set an alarm for 5.5 hours after going to sleep (I've noticed waking up at this time the most) and then do my WILD then.
So any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions about my lucid dreaming practice would be greatly appreciated! I want to make this the best practice that I can and I'm hoping that this will help me to get good at Lucid Dreaming. I mostly just went back to what I was doing when I first started LDing, but I added in some more stuff that I've learned in that time.
EDIT: I didn't know where to put this but I don't use dream signs. I never have because my thoughts are that you should be able to become lucid all the time, not just every time you see a specific dream sign. But if you have any thoughts on this that would be great too. And hopefully you could understand what I was saying in my post, sometimes my writing can ramble on and you lose the basic meaning of it.
|
|
Bookmarks