Well since September I've been trying to get myself into meditating more. I started logging a few factors related to lucid dreaming, but I have yet to collect a suitable sample size to analyze my own data. But since I haven't had an excuse to share what I've been working on lately, I want to explain the system.
In the front of my physical DJ, I set aside a few pages to make a chart.
On the chart, each day I write the date.
Each day I write down the meditation I did. I've heard so much backwards info on meditation that I've basically thrown in the towel and come up with my own technique. I figure as long as I'm consistent with it and give it my best shot I can't be hurting my chances at lucid dreaming. The meditation is counting down from 50, then counting down from 15 on each breath. That's all that I 'require', but allow myself to do a freeform meditation once my mind is settled. I can focus on a dream goal or something from waking life, or both. Sometimes I like to think through three or four topics. This generally takes me about fifteen to twenty minutes.
Generally I try to do meditation before bed for consistencies sake. If I do it earlier in the day, I note that on my chart.
More recently I've started documenting two other key factors that I think could most likely affect LD. Reality Checks and Bedtime. Though I've done a pretty poor job of documenting them as of late. (I haven't been the best about meditating either.) I write additional information about my reality checks in my dream journal in between dreams. (I remember one in particular when there was fog on my college campus, and the sun was shining through it. It was just so alien. I wrote a few sentences about how the fog looked and that it triggered me to RC.) With the goal being 3-5 RCs throughout the day, more welcome, but I'm going for quality over quantity.
The final column of the chart is the rating of the dreams that follow that night, basically the results of my effort. Dreams can be pretty hard to rationalize as a number, but I rank them using a star rank system. I'm pretty fluid with just going with what rank 'feels right' for the night, but a loose description of my rubric might be.
no stars: No recall whatsoever
one star: Any amount of recall, even if it's just a short dream fragment.
two stars: A lot of nonlucid dream recall, or a short dream with some semi-lucidity. (Perhaps I fail a reality check or something.)
three stars: A lot of semi lucidity, perhaps multiple instances of it. Or a Layer 1 lucid dream, where I become lucid and then wake up right after.
four stars: A short or medium length lucid dream. I often find in most lucid dreams I'm not as lucid as I'd like to be, or a dream where I become lucid but forget to carry out my goals.
five stars: I've had what I would consider five star nights, but not since I started this project. Five star is reserved for quality of nights I know I can have. Basically really awesome lucid dreams. Clear, Vivid, Fully Aware of the dream reality, and I can think clearly enough to carry out my goals.
And that's my system.
The problem is the chart I've made makes it blatantly obvious what my problem is. I'm a slacker. It reveals my shoddy track record at meditating and my roller coaster of a sleep schedule. On the bright side I have no excuse to be frustrated, I can see just how inconsistent I really am.
The project really had a twofold goal. The first goal was to put a focus on the work that goes into lucid dreaming rather than just result. I sort of envisioned that in order to be a good lucid dreamer I should subscribe to the Saitama philosophy.
Though I've been really hit and miss so far, I've seen myself improving the habit to the point that I've meditating about half of all nights (up from about once a week back in September.) My lucid dreaming as a whole hasn't improved noticeably, but I do notice I have 3 and 4 star nights mostly on the nights that I do my meditation. Really I don't care what results I get. I just want to do a better job of building the habit of meditating and documenting RCs and take pride in filling in that part of the chart, and figuring that improvement in LD will follow closely.
Plus, once I DO start doing a better job of keeping the habit up, I get the opportunity to start playing with my routine. (What works better, a 10:00 bedtime or a 11:00 bedtime? Maybe introduce a new variable once I can keep the others steady better. Scientifically analyze the effect of a gemstone under my pillow every night for two weeks. Weird spiritual magic, or if it's just a placebo I'm giving myself, it won't tell me which it is, but it will show me if it has an effect.) And I can scientifically determine with reasonable accuracy what works best for me. I considered some experiments, different amounts of RCs, drawing dreams to supplement regular practice.
And I am learning Java now, so I could totally write a program to analyze the data, if I copied it into a text document on the computer. But right now my data has a few too many aria variables for me to consider my dream journal chart much more than just a motivation to get my sh*t together. But seeing as there is a positive trend, maybe I'll get back to you in a few months.
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