Greetings and a few questions from a beginner

Hi there.

I recently became interested in lucid dreaming, and of my friends advised my to this site... so here I am :)
Through the years I've experienced lucidity and dream control, but by chance, and not very extensive. I guess it happens to most people.
Three days ago I read up on the phenomenon, on this site among others, and started keeping a dream journal. So I'm just getting started!
I haven't had any success yet, but I'm quite enthusiastic about it.

I have a few questions though:
I'd like to use a mantra while falling asleep. Does anyone have good experiences with this, and can anyone recommend any mantra in particular, like "I want to become lucid"?
Is there any literature on lucid dreaming that's worth checking out?
I usually only sleep for 7 hours at night in the weekdays (more in the weekends, though). Is it nessecary to sleep for a long period of time to experience lucid dreaming?
Has anyone had spiritual experiences in a lucid dream? If so, how was it like?

Thanks! - Jonahsoma.

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Originally Posted by Jonahsoma

I'd like to use a mantra while falling asleep. Does anyone have good experiences with this, and can anyone recommend any mantra in particular, like "I want to become lucid"?

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I have some experience from when I was developing my personal method... the project crashed down because of a lack of responses from my testers of the technique. :bang: Not surprisingly so, as it contained some very controversial ideas in it. I'm not going to type it up again, but you can find snippets on DV.

Anyway, when you wake up in the middle of a dream you can start thinking "The next time I have a dream, I will become lucid, I will have full control, and I will be where I want to be." You could also do it at the beginning of the night, but it might not work as well. I haven't successfully done the mantra for a while now, but the (full) technique improved recall in testers and had a 60% success rate.

For those of you that read this and volunteered for testing my technique, WHERE THE HELL ARE MY RESULTS????

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Originally Posted by Jonahsoma

Is there any literature on lucid dreaming that's worth checking out?

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You should find some Stephen LaBerge books, they are some popular LDing books. Don't know much about them, though, or any specific titles. I just know that lots of people like them.

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Originally Posted by Jonahsoma

Is it nessecary to sleep for a long period of time to experience lucid dreaming?

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No, you just need to be able to hit REM sleep. I get around the same amount of sleep as you on the weekdays, and I have the occasional lucid. If you learn to RC when something weird happens, then you should eventually get one. If you decide to do that, don't fuss over it, just do it when you remember. As far as I know, this won't carry over into every dream you have after a long time, but it helps.

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Originally Posted by Jonahsoma

Has anyone had spiritual experiences in a lucid dream? If so, how was it like?

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I don't understand that question very well. I believe I've had a shared dreaming experience, but no more. Sorry. :(

However, I might have had one. It was weird, though. I had a dream where I was walking in a forest with two people (one was a wise person), and then it skipped and I was killed by a weird electrical device by the government with one of the people. I felt the most horrible rapid vibrations in my head when that happened, and I woke up. I later noticed it was similar to the "two witnesses" story from Christianity (I am just saying that it was similar, I'm not saying anything against other religions or that my religion is better and whatnot; please don't say anything against what I said, it is not the time for religious debate).

:welcome: Welcome to DV, and good luck in your LDing adventures! :bigteeth:

BTW, there is a thanks button. :cheeky:

:welcome: Any good dreams so far? Sometimes the non-lucid dreams can be as rewarding as the lucid ones.

My personal mantra is, "The next thing I see will be a dream, the next thing I hear will be a dream, the next thing I touch...ect." Sometimes I get lucid just from this mantra, alone.

If you haven't already, check out Stephen LaBerge's books about lucid dreaming. Most of the information is the same as what you will find on this site, but he invented it, so it is nice to hear it from the source.

You don't need to sleep for a long time to lucid dream. Seven hours should be plenty of time. Try to figure out when you have your longest period of dreaming, and target your lucid dreaming for that time of night.

Thanks for your answers!

I'm sorry about the question about spiritual experience - I can see that it was very vague, and maybe I didn't know what I meant to say :) Let me rephrase it then: Has anyone had any meaningful experience while lucid dreaming? Like having a deep insight or realization about something, like reality, the universe, relationships, the meaning of life etc... or just a cool experience relating to this (it doesn't have to be an experience of ultimate truth). I guess I'm just curious...

I haven't had any meaningful, exciting or interesting dreams yet (this week), they've all been boring or only midly interesting, but I've had a lot of very exciting dreams before, so I'm very glad I started keeeping the DJ. I'll report when I have some good ones! :)

I have one more question for Robot_Butler: What do you mean, when you say to "target my lucid dreaming for that time of night"? Should I wake up at that time or set an alarm or something different?

Again, thanks for the answers!