The Smooze

Hi, my name is Angus and I am a 19 year old IT student from Australia. I've been trying to LD on and off for about a year now, but due to lack of both commitment and motivation have only been able to achieve lucidity once, through what I think was a fluke DILD:

"I woke up lying on the floor of a building. It was completely empty and silent, and my head was to the side. I saw orange tiles stretching into the distance, but I sensed that the dream was very flimsy and that if I moved at all I would lose the scene and probably the dream. Nevertheless, I got bored after a minute or so and tried looking up at the ceiling instead. I caught a glimpse of a large glass dome before I woke up.

Something was amiss, however; at the foot of my bed, a huge dog was staring at me and growling. I knew the false awakening for what it was, and banished the dog, but that action cost me the last of my stability and I woke up again, this time for real."

By making an account here I'm hoping to build up enough of a commitment to the task to successfully begin to dream. I have already begun keeping a dream journal of sorts, and have made a few MILD and WILD attempts, but have mostly failed so far (Though I have been on the edge several times during WILD attempts, though my excitement and fear caused me to lose it every time so far.) I'm also hoping to build up a regular reality checking habit but I haven't made much of a move towards that yet.

Hi Smooze welcome to DV!

Good idea would be to set some goals for what you want to accomplish when lucid (start of small!)
You will be more likely to have one soon if you have a goal planned out that you really want to try!

Hi there Smooze, and welcome. A fellow Aussie, yay!
Congratulations on that lucid dream! As you may have noticed, commitment to a technique is very important. Consistent results may take up to a couple of months to show itself. I changed techniques a month and a half ago, and I have only recently been having consistent lucid dreams again. But I tell you, it's very much worth it! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to send me a PM and I hope you enjoy your stay on the board:)

PS; you're up late.

I'm always up late. Speaking of which, I think something worked, because I managed to have another one last night. The journal entry:

Note: I had no way of finding out the date at 4:00 AM, so I had to guess by counting forwards from the last known date. Almost forgot the leap year.

"Mar 1st -> Mar 2nd (I think) 4:00 AM

Just had my first willing LD using a variation of DEILD. It overtook me surprisingly easily with no evidence of SP, just a slight throbbing in my head.

Everything was grey and fuzzy until I rubbed my hands together, at which point it became just grey; I was floating in a void. My first thought was "What did the tutorials say about this?" In reality the tutorials said nothing about this particular occurrence, of course, but at the time the answer was self evident. Stairs. So I summoned a seemingly infinite staircase, and added some basic footprints that the "tutorial" had told me to add. I started climbing and before long found myself on a grey plain. My vision was reduced to a circle right in front, and took on a greenish tint as if I was wearing night vision goggles.

I looked around and saw the potential in the grey field, and knew that with practice, it could be anything I wanted it to be. Through concentration I managed to colourize the scene, but I never lost the limited vision until I woke up. The field swam into colour, and I saw that it was mostly flat with a few cubes sitting around, looking remarkably similar to a flat plane in Minecraft, down to the grass textures; perhaps my mind thought it a suitable analogy to present me with. By this time I had lost most of my lucidity, so I made no effort to stabilize as I woke up."

It wasn't very clear nor vivid, in fact it was almost like looking at the whole thing through a fog, but it was a dream and it was lucid to a certain point, so I think I'll count it as a success.

Great attitude towards it and well done! Thanks for sharing your dream :-) sometimes further stabilisation is necessary, but as stabilisation is a form of dream control, expectations are necessary. Rub your hands expecting your vision to become wider and more focus (the grass texture). And like you said, a lucid dream is a lucid dream. Keep up whatever you're doing, mate!

What did you switch to/ from, Forceez? Do you like it better?

Yeah, for sure. I'm doing the dream yoga, accepting both realities as one to eliminate dualism.

Welcome, Snooze! I don't think your DILD was a fluke. I think whatever you did, paid off. Do some daytime awareness, RCs, mantras to help you DILD. MILD for DILD is a great technique, it's always there for you, in case your WILD fails. Keep your enthusiasm up!

Good luck!

If you realised you were dreaming, then well done you have had a lucid :D

An excerpt from the journal of my first semi-successful Lucid since last time:

"The Emperor's Hearing, 11/03/2012, 9:22 AM
State: Brief Lucid, Minor Control
Tone: Excitement (During lucid period), Anxiety.

I was in a park with my family, just doing nothing in particular, in an unspecified country whose culture held similarities to a variety of asian nations. I was approached by a character who I knew as my guide (in the country, not a dream guide) who had instructions to drive me to a hearing about my apparent attempt on an unnamed "Emperor"'s life. In the car, I was mostly unworried as I had done no such thing, in fact, I don't even remember coming to this country, it's as if it were in, say, a dream...

I forgot to do a basic reality check, but I knew it to be the truth anyway. I immediately closed my eyes and visualized the scenery become more vivid; even with my eyes closed I could feel the seat under my hands, and when I opened my eyes I saw everything so amazingly clear, the clearest lucid I have ever had. I finally got around to performing a reality check of sorts by forming a fireball in my hand, and was rewarded with a very real looking small blue fireball floating above my palm. When I concentrated it grew bigger, but the moment I took my attention off it in order to cast it, it shrank down or changed form.

Eventually I became so engrossed in this new power and seeing if I can successfully cast one (I asked my father, who was sitting across from me, to fling a fireball at me so I could test a shield spell; he did so, and it worked.), I forgot all about my lucidity and the car arrived at the courthouse, but I awoke as I walked through the doors."

I'd heard stories about the vividness, of course, but I'd never truly understood until that moment.