Thread: Hi, I'm new! TygrHawk, thanks for the welcome.

Hi, people.

I'm 27, but I first became aware of the concept in lucid dreaming late in high school, along with much research into dreaming and consciousness. Personal life interfered, and ~ ten years later I've returned. The subject holds too much fascination and potential for self-enlightenment (and, ok, dream babes were a factor,) and I'm determined to see things through.

For those who are familiar with the fantasy author Robert Jordan, he has a finely developed and nearly unspellable dream world whose rules seem clearly based on what I know of LD, and that's been one of the external factors tickling at me all this time.

Two days ago, I did a Google on LD, and found this site, and after reading everything I could find here, decided I had to make the plunge. The support and understanding of such a large community appears to be an invaluable resource for so many of you before me.

I've always had excellent dream recall and been fascinated by what appears to be a direct channel of communication from my symbolic subconscious to my logical conscious. In essence, my understanding of dreaming is that dreams serve two purposes, one of which is to catalogue and process data taken in by the conscious and subconscious during the day, and secondly, for the subconscious to communicate basic principles of self-development and observation in a super-efficient compressed symbolic form, using the most appropriate and direct personal symbols possible.

I've used self-hypnosis to reprogram myself in the past, but the unintended consequences are their own story altogether.

As for this new foray into LD, Tuesday evening (when I encountered the site) I began RCing regularly, and expressed my explicit interest to myself in LD as I went to sleep. That night, I recalled four dreams, but did not become lucid. I opened a dream journal in MS word, and recorded all four. Yesterday I continued RC, and last night I only got a few hours of sleep, attempting WILD and recalled a single dream (probably my only REM period), and still didn't become lucid, even though I was grappling with a gun-wielding robber in a convenience store. =P

Today, I've continued RCing, and I'm going to make my third attempt at lucidity tonight. I don't know how long it will take until my first LD, be it hours here, days, weeks, or months, but I'm not resting (ha. ha.) Don't worry, I'm not frantic about making it work, just inexorably determined. =) My goal is to eventually be able to WILD at will. Hey, we all need something to keep us going.

Thanks for being here, and if I can help or support anyone else, PM away.

JSmithPI (I've used this handle ever since Middle School, when I wrote a series of improbably caricaturish stories about Jones Smith, Private Investigator)