Hey guys!
My name is Gabriel, and I'm glad to have found this forum. Thank you for accepting me!
When I was a child, in Romania, I had many, many nightmares all the time, I still remember some of them and I know that dreams were an important part of my life. I also clearly remember myself being able to go back into dreams I had, as well as having lucid dreams many times and even being able to change the scene to my will. I don't remember how old I was, but I was very young. I have never heard about lucid dreaming at the time and didn't even know this concept.
A few years back, I bought Charlie Morey's book "Dreams of Awakening" during a trip in India and have tried "his" techniques. Within two weeks, I had my first lucid dream, out of which I immediately woke up out of excitement. I then stopped practicing. I think it was because I reached my goal of having a lucid dream. Weird, huh?
Between two and three months ago, for some unknown reason, I've gotten into this again. This time, I am and have been strongly motivated and want to learn how to lucid dream at will, for the purpose of connecting with my subconscious with the goal of learning and spiritual self-development. It seems to me like it could be possibly one of the best ways to improve and connect with yourself as a person. I am reading "Dreams of Awakening" and Stephen LaBerge's "Exploring the world of Lucid Dreaming". I'm also lurking around in the forum, but not too much. I want to spend time practicing.
What I practice:
During the day:
- Prospective memory training (started 20 days ago) based on LaBerge's book, but will soon switch to my own cues and triggers which I've gathered from my own dreams
- Read about ADA a couple of days ago and I plan to try and do that for two months.
- Focus on trying to take things slowly (not be in a rush) and improve my kindness.
During the night:
- Learning to stand still after each wake up (it's not easy for me). I saw it helps improve my recall tremendously.
- Practice an induction method each night (MILD during the week, WILD during the weekend waking up after 7 hours of sleep)
I, of course, also have a dream journal. I have been meditating for many years. For the past years, I've been doing Vipassana (more or less) daily for 2 hours per day (1h morning 1h night).
I have until now had 3 lucid dreams, one a few days after starting to read, and then 2 more, all of them about one month apart. Progress seems slow but I think it's there. I'm focusing a lot on improving my recall and I think ADA contributes a lot to it. I hope I get there!
It's gotten hard to ask myself "Am I dreaming?". It seems that my mind has gotten used to the fact that I don't, given the little success I had. But I'm trying my best to use ADA and investigating consciousness to still keep the question real.
