Hi Gang,

Over the past six or so years, I've been inducing lucid dreams from a waking state without actually knowing the name for what I was doing. My username, eticket, is how I described my first lucid dream to my wife; "it's better than an E-Ticket ride at Disneyland". Over time, I've become better at inducing dreams from a waking state and can do so on a fairly consistent basis. I have yet to recognize a dream and then become lucid in it... I always begin my dreams from a lucid state.

A typical scenario goes something like this:

I wake up from my 5am alarm and on the 5 days a week that I don't actually need to get up at this time, I'll try to lucid dream.

I focus on trying to turn the random images that float across my closed eyes into something I can recognize. It usually takes anywhere from 1 to 10 minutes for me to reach the desired state.

I can feel myself begin to paralyze... the feeling is hard to describe, but it is exactly what you'd expect to feel if you were being turned to stone. I can tell the second or two before it happens and if I don't get too excited (very difficult early on... but pretty easy now) and I let the paralysis "wash" over me. I almost always hear random sounds when this happens. Sometimes... if the random sounds are too loud, they will startle me back awake.

Once paralysis washes over me, I face the opening scene. Sometimes it is related to the image I was trying to focus on when I was awake, sometimes it is random, and sometimes it is a "dark" image (something scary). If it is a dark image, I simply fly away from it and create a new scene to "land" on. For instance, if I see a scary creature when my dream first starts, I'll fly away from it and focus on something common like a mall... I'll then land at the mall.

Usually (and I hate to admit this) I immediately call up a sex scene with someone I'm interested in having sex with. Once the sex is done, then I'm off to do whatever I want to do.

Early on... I had trouble conjuring up specific faces, flying, walking through walls, etc... but over the years, I've learned that there isn't anything I can't do.... and while I still have difficulties getting specific faces and bodies to appear, these occasions are rare.

Some random thoughts:

My dreams seem to be "real time" and usually last around an hour.

I have actually managed to open my REAL eyes while lucid dreaming (on two occasions) and wound up with incredibly gummed up eyes. Interesting that on both occasions, I could see my fire alarm LED light in my dreams... always appearing as a bright green spot in my dream. When I woke myself up... I was staring at my fire alarm LED light in the ceiling. I'm not sure how I managed to get my eyes open and continue lucid dreaming... but I have.

It irritates the heck out of me when the sounds that occur as I'm becoming paralyzed actually startle me and wake me up.

Sometimes I can lucid dream at night as I'm first going to bed... but it is rare... as in maybe once or twice per month.

I lucid dream anywhere from a few times a month to fifteen or so times per month if I'm focusing on it. If I don't focus on lucid dreaming... then It will happen every other month or so on its own. I go in phases where I do it actively for awhile and then slow down.

All in all... I enjoy lucid dreaming. I'm happy to have found this group and I can't wait to do some reading. I just registered a few minutes ago and haven't had a chance to read anything yet. I'm looking forward to seeing how common my experiences are.

Oh... before I forget... I'm a third year doctoral student at Arizona State University in my real life.

Joe