Thanks for your welcome, Truthbearer!
I have to say that I feel very optimistic about my chances for having another lucid night. I can't help but feel that now it has happened once, a kind of switch has gone off somewhere that will make it more likely to happen again in future. Also, my interest and dedication to the subject has been renewed.
Re: the NovaDreamer - I bought one off eBay a couple of months ago and started to use it. At first I had some promising results, but my sleep schedule became very negatively affected. They suggest taking a break periodically, so I set it aside for a time. Around that time some personal matters took me away from my lucidity efforts, and I just had not got back into the swing of it. Now that I've had a lucid dream, I am going to go back to it. At this point I haven't had enough experience with it to be a good judge of its results. I can say for sure that it has helped with dream recall. I'm also sure that I have receieved lucidity cues from it but have not had the awareness to take advantage of them. What I find often happens to me is that I awake from a dream *before* the lights start to flash. So I have a dream, wake up before the 5 minutes that the NovaDreamer waits before starting to flash, and then have the lights go off while I am awake. It's some kind of compensation mechanism, I think. Perhaps I need to adjust the lights to make them not as bright so that my unconscious doesn't force me into waking early. I'm not really sure and since I haven't used it for long, I could just be going through a typical adjustment period.
Overall, I'm pleased with the device; it accurately detects eye movements. I performed some tests to make certain and I'm convinced. I used to think that I was such a neophyte (and naturally indisposed) at lucid dreaming that I could never hope to have a lucid dream without a NovaDreamer. I had one for a while ten years back. But now I realize that it's just another tool, something to focus one's mind and heart toward lucidity but not indispensible for the attainment of lucid dreams. Whatever helps, I suppose...
You know, when I told a friend about my lucid dream she told me that she had those dreams all the time as a kid. She learned lucidity to deal with her nightmares as a child, and she still had the occasional moment of lucidity as an adult. I asked her why she didn't pursue this ability she developed as a child and she responded that she never really thought about it very much. Now this is a woman who is engaged every day as a therapist for troubled teens. I was floored. I wanted to tell her all the great possibilities lucidity has for herself, her work with her kids, and all the rest! I'm just amazed at how ignorant people are about this topic and the great possibilities it has for the future, especially when these are people who have so much more ability for lucid dreaming than I do!! Here I am, trying for 10 years (off and on) to have a lucid dream and my friend just doesn't bother to awaken her innate ability. Well, I'm determined to go forward and give this thing my all. I feel so strongly that it holds all kinds of possibilities for all of us. In a world where the human spirit is constantly being reduced to chemicals and behaviorism, we need some tools to regain our connection with authentic numinous experience. I want to be a part of that.
Thanks for your compliment, too, regarding my storytelling. Hopefully I'll have some deeper and longer stories to relate in the near future!
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