Hi Moonbeam,
Well, first of all, I had a couple SP dreams and lucid dreams when I was a kid. So, I knew this stuff was for real when I chanced upon reading about it around 5 or 6 years ago. That helps with the believability factor. When you know its real, and you've experienced it, you sort of understand that "hey! I can really do this!"
I started off with Casteneda's method: develop steely intent, the "looking at your hands" RC, and not staring to hard at anything lest you lose lucidity. (I had not read LaBerge at that point, and I did not know about him.) Back then, because I was not really following a structured program, I had maybe an LD once a month, maybe once every two months, maybe not even that. Also, there were not online communities that I knew about at the time, so there was no support for it. After a while, I lost interest.
Then, I found LaBerge's Lucid Dreaming when going through a book store. Quantum-friggin'-leap compared to what I had gone through before. Before getting through my first week's dream journal I had a couple short LD's which got me fired up. At that time, I was getting into a new job that required a long commute (which I still have, by the way), so I don't think I was going at full-steam. But, when I hit my stride around 3 to 4 years ago, I was having one to two LDs a week, and good ones. Sometimes more, and sometimes multilples over a night. Then, my job started having me travel a lot. The jet lag and sheer exhaustion from the job in general killed that phase after about 9 solid months.
A couple of years ago, I started again. That time, I knew for certain that LDs were just a natural phenomenon, there was no mystery to it. Also, I didn't have to learn about it, it was "old news". I was not traveling so much, my commute was slightly better, so I was not as exhausted, but some of the fire had gone out of LDing because it was no longer fresh and new. So, it took me a little longer to "ramp up" to a strong practice. However, it was my strongest phase yet. Multiple LDs per night, many nights per week. To the point where I did not want to enter anything into my DJ so I could avoid losing time in dreamland, and so that I would not feel tired in the AM. (DJing does make you groggy the next morning.)
But, I think that not keeping up with the DJ was my downfall. My recall started to fade. And, with it, my control. I had more dreams where I was semi-lucid, unable to remember the techniques for sharpening lucidity, but lucid enough to do stupid things. Dreamsex and flying are good, but after a while I wanted to do other things and I never remembered to. It was eye-opening in this way: I thought I was lucid, but I wasn't really. I found parallels in the waking world, such as: I thought I was paying attention to what someone told me, but I didn't remember it right.
In my last phase I did have some really important breakthroughs, though. I found how to approach my "fear" dream characters, which really inspired me. I was exploring the sense of dream tactility. I became pretty good at going back into the dream from the waking state, and also at passing through solid barriers to change the dream.
So, here I am again, starting almost-new.
wilds and dilds were what I used. But, after a while, the no-technique method worked (I just knew that I would have LDs).
And I know now that I must keep a dream journal and maintain a steady stream of small tasks to keep me sharp.
Hoped my blathering helped.
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