Thread: Lucid Dreaming Fundamentals -- With Q & A

I'm sure that by now you're sick of seeing me asking you questions, and i'm pretty aware of the fact that i've done it a lot by now. Still, i'm incredibly frustrated by my progress. If you could take a moment to read all of this, i couldn't be more greatful. Stay with me as i poorly explain my story since day 1 of my practice..

I accidentally ran accross the concept of LDing back in 2011, yeah that's a long time ago.. And to this day, i've never had as much success as my first year of practice. As the years passed, i could only get more pessimistic about my own skills because i could only see them go down and down. Only through the past year have i tried to get an idea of where i've gone wrong, but it still stays unclear. One thing i regret is reading about all the information on the forums. Because of this, i've gotten my practice mixed up with hundreds of different "ways" to LD. I've essentially lost my way with the time i spent reading up about all the techniques and so on. I don't really blame anyone but myself for this though. My view on LDing went from "RC only" to a ridiculously complex understanding that to me, LDing became such a hard thing to do in my mind.

Technique after technique, tutorial after tutorial, i've gotten confused so much i tried quitting this for the second time today.. Only when i tried to quit i realized that LDing became part of me.. Hence what? 5 years of trying to do it? I'm actually surprised by the amount of persistence i hold, i even bugged you out for WILD continuously for 4 months only to realize in the end that i was forcing it on myself.

I knew nothing special. I only RC'd. That's all. No dream journals since i used to remember my dreams in my head, and nothing more than RC's and WBTBs.

Through this very simple approach, i gained 70 LDs in around 1 year, with around 2~3 LDs weekly. I did what i just mentioned for that 1 year, and after that i got burnt out and stopped RC'ing as much, and i eventually stopped it all. Ever since then, i could never get the same success with any other method. I didn't know about anything other than just "RC to lucid dream". As i delved more into how it all worked, i only got more confused from it.

I'm literally listing down what i used to do:
- Nose plug RC all the time
- Occasional unintended WBTBs
- Consistent sleep (School days)
- Consistency in the practice (months ~ 1 year?)

How come that doing stuff so simple, i got success rather easily? No complex "requirements" to LD.. I only "just did it" It's pretty obvious that i could just mimick what i used to do to succeed again, but i'm not even sure if it would work again, which is making me unsure of whether or not i should go through it.

My frustration is probably leaking through this text, but i've really had enough of wasting anymore time without improving. 5 Years is a lot.

Maybe all of this is irrelevant to the thread, but i could only find this thread as the best place to say this. I've recently jumped into the practice of self-awareness, but something feels wrong and i don't know what it is. There is something i'm misunderstanding in here, and i'm asking you for help on figuring that out.

Here's my summary question: What should i do next if i want to succeed like i used to?

What should you do?

Well, aside from continuing your self-awareness practice, here is the routine I suggest you pursue:

- Nose plug RC all the time
- Occasional unintended WBTBs
- Consistent sleep (School days)
- Consistency in the practice (months ~ 1 year?)

Seriously. From what you wrote, it seems to me the the best thing for you to do is start all over, forgetting all the crap you've accumulated in your brain over the last couple of years. Go back to what worked for you, and do so with the confidence you had the first time around: there is no reason that what you did originally will not work for you again, so there is no reason to feel negatively about it (indeed, feeling negatively is a very bad thing in LD-world, which I'm sure you already know).

About the only other thing that I would recommend you add to your routine is keeping a dream journal, because that will only help, and keeping a DJ won't fill your head with confusing ideas, only more dreams.

For what it's worth, I haven't changed my LD'ing practice much at all in the nearly 40 years I've been doing this; sure, lots of new techniques have come and gone, and I've tried most of them, but using the familiar steps I've always used (steps that mostly resemble a classic WILD, BTW, along with consistent self-awareness practice) has always been my best route to lucidity.

Another thing you might do is get a copy of LaBerge's Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, if you don't have one already. I've found that reading or rereading that book is a nice refresher course of the basics -- basics you might already know, but basics that might desperately need to bubble back up to the surface.

So try not to be frustrated, but do try to go back to the simple steps that worked just fine for you originally...and do it with the confidence and expectation that you had originally.

Good luck!

Originally Posted by Sageous

What should you do?

Well, aside from continuing your self-awareness practice, here is the routine I suggest you pursue:

- Nose plug RC all the time
- Occasional unintended WBTBs
- Consistent sleep (School days)
- Consistency in the practice (months ~ 1 year?)

Seriously. From what you wrote, it seems to me the the best thing for you to do is start all over, forgetting all the crap you've accumulated in your brain over the last couple of years. Go back to what worked for you, and do so with the confidence you had the first time around: there is no reason that what you did originally will not work for you again, so there is no reason to feel negatively about it (indeed, feeling negatively is a very bad thing in LD-world, which I'm sure you already know).

About the only other thing that I would recommend you add to your routine is keeping a dream journal, because that will only help, and keeping a DJ won't fill your head with confusing ideas, only more dreams.

For what it's worth, I haven't changed my LD'ing practice much at all in the nearly 40 years I've been doing this; sure, lots of new techniques have come and gone, and I've tried most of them, but using the familiar steps I've always used (steps that mostly resemble a classic WILD, BTW, along with consistent self-awareness practice) has always been my best route to lucidity.

Another thing you might do is get a copy of LaBerge's Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, if you don't have one already. I've found that reading or rereading that book is a nice refresher course of the basics -- basics you might already know, but basics that might desperately need to bubble back up to the surface.

So try not to be frustrated, but do try to go back to the simple steps that worked just fine for you originally...and do it with the confidence and expectation that you had originally.

Good luck!

Thanks for the informative replies as usual, Sageous. Hearing that it will work like it did before really helps!

I'm going to start over by starting the habit of DJing. Along with that, i have to fix my sleep schedule because it's basically screwed over. I used to WBTB with alarms, so i'll do just that. As for RC's, i'll just do them again. Perhaps motivation is a factor i forgot to include, but i'm considering it so it's alright. All this time i wasted taught me to trust what works for me best instead of relying on what works for others, maybe my own way won't work for many, but that's what makes it mine. I'm very hopeful that this time it will work. No, it has to work this time.

Also, i do have ETWOLD and i've read a bit of it. I will re-read it as a refresher on my way.. This will be tough, but if i can finally get what i lost, i'm in.

Reading your thoughts on memory sparked an interest I wonder if you can help shed light- While reading one of your posts about memory I am reminded of my Grandmother who is forgetting so very much now with Alzheimer's disease - how does the Lucidity thing help us if we had a disease like that do you think...if my nan got lucid would she remember things she could not remember when she is awake?... Or would the disease( the disease affects cognitive/memory functions in daily life as it is attacking that part of the brain ...) not effect lucidity in the dream state...?

Sorry to throw you a curve ball - hope it's ok on your thread

^^ Hmm. That's a tough one to answer. Seriously.

Let me preface by saying that I'm not an expert on Alzheimer's by any measure, so I could be completely wrong in what I'm about to say. That, in this case, is the good news, because maybe you can do a little research and prove me wrong. Now for the bad news:

Lucid dreaming, unfortunately, tends to run anathema to Alzheimer's. The very things that make us lucid -- self-awareness and access to short-term memory -- are among the very things that someone suffering from Alzheimer's has the most trouble summoning... especially on cue, as is required for LD'ing. Because of that, I think it might be very difficult for your Nan to become lucid in the first place. But let's say she could, thanks to some luck, hard work, special skill on her part, and maybe the power of your loving support:

If your Nan were able to have lucid dreams, I believe that, with one exception, her lucid life would be very similar to her waking life, because the functions of consciousness are pretty much the same in LD's as they are in waking life. So she would very likely experience the same problems in her LD's that she does when awake. Except for one thing:

One of the truly difficult aspects of Alzheimer's is the confusion and fear that can accompany an inability to recover short term memories. In other words, your reality in waking life is defined by what you remember, and Alzheimer's can truly damage that definition by taking away your past. But dreams are Here&Now events happening in a world that is by definition you, and that world can, if ever so briefly, eclipse the world where you must remember things. So, if you are lucid, if you know you are dreaming, then you also know that your dreamworld is inexorably You, and that what you remember is not as important as where you are right now. In other words, an Alzheimer's sufferer who can LD might be able to enjoy a sort of retreat; a brief moment in a reality that requires no memories, and that might offer a great relief from the hell of not remembering during the day.

This exception might also be a boon to those whose Alzheimer's include bouts of dementia, because I believe dementia might not be able to exist in a lucid dream... it's hard to be confused by what is real when you are in a world where you know that nothing is real.

tl;dr: Because the cognitive functions that drive lucidity are basically the same as those that drive waking-life consciousness, LD'ing would probably not help your Nan, and may not be achievable at all -- except perhaps to provide a moment of freedom from the anxiety that can accompany the disease's symptoms. And keep in mind that everything I said here could be wrong.

I hope that helped; and am truly sorry if (or that) it didn't.

@Patience108 (What a goldmine this thread is, it really deserves repeat visits.) I wanted to add some hope, especially if your Nan has some interest in lucid dreaming or in some other subject, perhaps anything that is a shared interest between you two. Research indicates that learning can slow alzheimer's (google "alzheimer's slowed by learning"), so if you can get her actively learning something, that could help her. The lucid dreaming path has, for me at least, had a big impact on my interest in learning and exploring new subjects both for the purpose of lucid dreaming and because of inspirations received due to my lucid dreaming experiences. There could be a potential for helping her in the same way, first by learning about lucid dreaming and later by possibly being inspired to learn about many other subjects.

She might also enjoy telling you stories from the past that her mind can still access and you may learn some new things worth passing on to your children, nephews or nieces.

Yes thanks I really appreciate your thoughts Sageous and fogelbise too - thanks! We do some memory stuff together and work with words etc and I along with a few friends have introduced this kind of thing to some other older members within our community also - we have began introducing Lucid dreaming basic's to her and them for some time - as they often get bad dreams and restless nights. We have had some success with getting calmer more peaceful sleeps not so much lucid dreams but getting them to feel the courage "to look the dream in the face" has significant results in terms of good nights sleep ( no nightmares ) which is great and I hope it will go on helping them after they cannot express it very well to us in words anymore ( this will happen if they live long with the disease ...to think they might have some tools to take with then wherever the disease takes them )

I also find this subject interesting as it makes me think about the Tibetan belief that if we gain lucidity in our dreams a lot during our life we have more chance of recognising we are in a " dream" when we die and realise the truth of all existence ...However ... Seeing the brain go to disease and how this impedes on lucidity makes me wonder how we will cope without our an actual " brain" when we die. As you probly know - They and many others believe when we " leave the body" at death it's like dreaming ...but I can't help but think there is a big difference - the brain is gone or switched off! When I think about this and how much effort it is even with our working memory and brain in tact while we are alive ( some anyway ) it makes me think how weak or somehow completely alien it will be to die - how can we make sure we have a fighting chance...? Can working on our lucidity really make a difference? I think it can but I don't know why I think it can in the face of what I mention here ,

Another curve ball - thanks and hope it can be called Fundementals - still your thoughts are most welcome

Originally Posted by Patience108

...They and many others believe when we " leave the body" at death it's like dreaming ...but I can't help but think there is a big difference - the brain is gone or switched off! When I think about this and how much effort it is even with our working memory and brain in tact while we are alive ( some anyway ) it makes me think how weak or somehow completely alien it will be to die - how can we make sure we have a fighting chance...? Can working on our lucidity really make a difference? I think it can but I don't know why I think it can in the face of what I mention here...

Well, in order for LD'ing -- of a fairly advanced variety -- to help you navigate the potential spiritual transitions of death, you must put on your Tibetan Yoga hat and take a leap of faith.

Yes, as far as we know, when your brain shuts down so do "You," period.

But what if there are things that go beyond "as far as we know," and there really is More, including the possibility that whatever it is that constitutes our consciousnesses, our souls, our selves, moves on to something new or maybe better? What if, like so many enjoy saying (without, of course, one wit of scientific evidence) our consciousness really does move on to another existence -- perhaps into a newborn child, perhaps on to something else altogether?

What if the process of this transition includes a complete erasure of everything that was "You" in this lifetime? And what if this transition occurs with no regard at all for the condition of your the brain from which your being is quietly stepping at death? All these what-ifs require a serious leap of faith to be accepted as possible, and that is the leap the Tibetan lamas take when they practice sleep yoga.

Sleep Yoga is essentially extremely advanced LD'ing, where the practitioner learns to be lucid throughout her entire sleep cycle, and to do so with an ease that makes the state of constant self-awareness second nature. The long-term plan is to have that skill -- that state of mind -- in place at the hour of death, so that a sleep yogi can hold onto her Self throughout the death transition, the bardo, and then have a conscious hand in where her soul continues on to after death... she can move on to a new body as already ordained by the Wheel of Life (whatever that means) or perhaps instead choose to jump off the Wheel and propel her soul/Self toward a higher existence.

But it all requires a leap of faith. A sleep yoga practitioner believes that they will be able to guide their Self through the bardo -- the space between the last life and the next -- and maintain their sense of self on to the next iteration of their physical being, thus breaking the chains of reincarnation and destiny. This belief rises above any proof they are shown about the limits of biology, or the cognitive damage a disease like Alzheimer's can cause. Indeed, this faith -- and the skills drawn from a lifetime of sleep yoga practice -- might just allow a practitioner to hold onto his Self throughout the bardo no matter what condition his brain was in at the time of death. So, if you believe, the physical condition of your brain is meaningless relative to the condition of your mind and soul at the time of death.

I'm sure I've made a shambles of millennia of Tibetan philosophy and mysticism with this incredibly brief and sloppy statement, but hopefully you get the point!

And here's a thing to think about: what is there to lose in practicing lucidity with sleep yoga-type long term goals? If it works, you're ahead of the game, and if it doesn't, well, you'll never know! Also, the practice has benefits in this life, so, even if death is final, there is value in it anyway.

I guess the tl;dr version of this is simply that the Tibetans believe that their state of mind will give them a fighting chance to move on, regardless of the state of their brains... and this sort of make sense, since all of our brains are in pretty poor shape just a few minutes after our hearts stop beating.

All of what you have said rings true for me - your speaking what feels so sensical to me I am very grateful to you for putting it all into words!

In Order to make it paramount in my life ...to be and to remind myself I am doing this kind of work - how actually - did you at some point start reminding your self during the day...maybe during your RRC?

I spose that's the whole self awareness practice you often speak of? I want to be a sleep yoga practitioner so I spose I need to see myself as one. I am doing what I can to leap and trust by working on being self aware and training myself to be present now - in knowing that the dream domain and the waking life domain could be The Bardo after death ( which is why we do state checks/RC etc right? ) and my state of mind when reduced down to its very core could be a feeling close to what I experience when lucid and self aware in the dream state...or in waking life right ~ when in the here and now? Is this the training that can lead to the confidence we need for these long term goals iyo?

Originally Posted by Patience108

In Order to make it paramount in my life ...to be and to remind myself I am doing this kind of work - how actually - did you at some point start reminding your self during the day...maybe during your RRC?

I'm not sure anymore how I began making a priority of being self-aware; I wonder if I didn't even know I was doing it, back in the 1970's when I was a teen getting into all this stuff (it's amazing, if occasionally distressing, to think about how much I've forgotten over the years). But yes, if I could go back, the RRC would have been a most helpful tool!

I spose that's the whole self awareness practice you often speak of? I want to be a sleep yoga practitioner so I spose I need to see myself as one. I am doing what I can to leap and trust by working on being self aware and training myself to be present now - in knowing that the dream domain and the waking life domain could be The Bardo after death ( which is why we do state checks/RC etc right? ) and my state of mind when reduced down to its very core could be a feeling close to what I experience when lucid and self aware in the dream state...or in waking life right ~ when in the here and now? Is this the training that can lead to the confidence we need for these long term goals iyo?

Yes, that training -- and a firm grasp of the Fundamentals, just to stay on topic! -- can help, initially, but there is so much more to do:

Before you see yourself as a sleep yoga practitioner, it is very important to be a dream yoga practitioner. Sleep yoga is a fairly involved practice, and will probably -- perhaps literally -- take the rest of your life to master, and the things practiced in dream yoga are the first steps toward the state of mind/being you are pursuing with sleep yoga.

Sivason has a very good DVA Dream Yoga class you might want to check out, if you haven't already. I'm not sure he's still around much anymore, but I'll bet he'd turn up occasionally to help you out (he's that sort of person). Also, you might want to find a copy of The Tibetan Yoga's of Dream and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, if you haven't already, because it offers a nice overview of dream yoga (the sleep yoga section is a bit lacking, though -- sleep yoga might just not translate well into books). Carefully reading a good translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead (the Bardo Thodol) is a very good idea too, if you are really interested (I've found that the W.Y. Evans-Wentz edition to be among the best) -- and don't worry: you can read it without needing to hold to any Buddhist tenets.

Though they do both involve the same basics (i.e., self-awareness, learning to hold to the present) sleep yoga, in my opinion, is very different from LD'ing. RC's, for instance, are very important for LD'ing, but really don't matter in sleep yoga; when you reach a state of mind that comfortably contains a sleep yoga practice, RC's will not be necessary (you likely will not have a dream body to do them with, anyway). However, it is very important to be an accomplished LD'er before you can correctly practice sleep yoga, because the lucid dreaming mindset and experience will form the foundation for your dream and sleep yoga explorations.

Keep in mind also that the "big" things in life tend to be the most difficult to master. If you want to practice sleep yoga, allow yourself a lot of time (like, decades), and be aware that LD'ing and dream yoga are important preliminary steps. Oh, and also be aware that the improvements to your LD'ing life that a successful dream yoga practice can provide are well worth the effort on its own, even if you never achieve sleep yogi status (or you do achieve sleep yogi status and the Tibetans were wrong ).

Finally:

...by working on being self aware and training myself to be present now - in knowing that the dream domain and the waking life domain could be The Bardo after death

This is more of a quick aside because it'll be obvious later, but you will never need to assume that, or wonder if, you are in the Bardo. If you are successful in your sleep yoga practice, recognizing the Bardo will be the easy part (especially because you will also be pretty sure your physical body just died); and you will be able to navigate it thanks to years of practice in keeping your Self intact throughout the entirety of many a night's sleep.


I hope all that made sense; I'm sort of rushing this out... let me know if anything is unclear. And good luck, regardless!

Sageous, do you have any FILD tips?

^^ Nope.

In my opinion, FILD is simply a technique for working through a DEILD transition, and one that requires a bit more work and distraction than achieving a DEILD really needs. I've never felt a need to do more stuff when I can just go right back to my dream after a micro-awakening.

Plus, if I can remember correctly, FILD is also meant to induce SP, which seems more like a quest for distraction rather than a reentry into lucid dreamland. So, again, it seems an unnecessary addition to a simple process. By the way, FILD wouldn't induce actual SP anyway, but seems rather to be a technique that includes noticing the onset of REM Atonia (which also doesn't make sense to me, because if REM Atonia sets in, that means you are in REM and probably dreaming, so it seems like a better idea to notice the dream rather than a mechanism meant to keep your body still during the dream).

Oh, and I know this doesn't matter at all, but it sort of has a funny name if you ask me. The first time I read the term, years ago here on DV, I thought someone was just kidding. I thought, "Seriously? Finger induced? This must be another **ILD joke!"

So I guess you've figured out by now that if I were forced to offer a FILD tip I would simply suggest that you do not bother with it at all and just do your DEILD's in as simple a manner as possible.

Sorry!


P.S: To any FILD guru or aficionado who stumbles on this post: Please don't explain to me what a great technique it is; I'm not looking for an argument, and I'm certainly not questioning anything that might work for you...I'm just stating my relatively informed opinion, nothing more.

hello. I had some questions i felt would be useful for people to see. I feel as though i can voice a question some people wouldn't exactly word. So, for Wild you need to fall asleep... Your BODY needs to fall asleep, not mind.
When this is said , before reading info on this site i would have said sleep= Sleep paralysis. Thats how id know I'm "asleep".
I now know we are only in Rem atonia in REM. (High brain activity THETA to ALPHA)
Okay, cool, makes sense. But seeing that a lot of sleep consists of NREM, would this mean "sleep" is just laying there unparalyzed in DELTA for a while? if this is the case, why can't i just lie still and essentially be asleep? What actually marks sleep? it seems body and mind are connected in falling asleep (brainwaves have to lower body has to relax) in order to actually sleep yet we must keep our brainwaves in the waking conscious state to WILD.

Also. In regards to how long we should stay awake for WBTB...
If say, we stay up for 5 mins, would it take less time to for my body to fall asleep? This is what id assume because I'm more tired after 5 mins opposed to 20. 20 mins extends how long you can stay aware but also increases the time to fall asleep. So if we were able to muster our awareness and self control long enough to keep aware after 5 mins... could we enter dream faster?

^^ First, let me mention, respectfully, that you might be giving this a bit too much thought. You already know, instinctively, what it means to be asleep, because you've been doing it all your life; just as you very likely know, for sure, that just lying still does not equal being asleep. That said:

Originally Posted by LostTraveller9

... But seeing that a lot of sleep consists of NREM, would this mean "sleep" is just laying there unparalyzed in DELTA for a while? if this is the case, why can't i just lie still and essentially be asleep? What actually marks sleep? it seems body and mind are connected in falling asleep (brainwaves have to lower body has to relax) in order to actually sleep yet we must keep our brainwaves in the waking conscious state to WILD.

Physically speaking, I can't give you the details (mostly because I don't remember them properly, and have no time to look them up), but you've already answered much of it yourself: The sleep cycle is a period where your brain and body perform a bunch of processes that basically serve to restore your bodily functions after a day's activity (I'm sure a sleep scientist would chuckle at that simplistic and woefully incomplete description, but hopefully it works here). These processes include lots of chemical/hormonal activity, as well as measurable changes in brain activity.

Those changes in brain activity might reflect a process in itself. Delta sleep, for instance, might be a time where maintenance is being done to brain functions like memory which require an extreme slowdown of waking-life consciousness -- so brain waves are long and slow, which is very different from how they look during waking-life. On the other hand, when most of the maintenance is done and systems start lining back up for the next day's activity, brain activity reflects this by up more closely with waking-life activity -- which is why LD'ing works much better after 5 or 6 hours' sleep. Dreaming itself might simply be a service provided by a sleeping brain to a near-waking-life consciousness that needs perceptual input; so our dreams might be nothing more than random information meant to give our perception input so we don't prematurely wake up because we're looking for input.

The bottom line, physically speaking, is that many bodily processes are different during sleep, and there is much more going on during NREM/Delta sleep than just not dreaming.

Philosophically speaking, sleep is much more clear-cut, because it represents an exit of your waking-life consciousness from the waking-life world. You are, for a few hours, generally separated from your physically world (never fully separated, BTW: due to innate defensive programming, our senses, especially sight and hearing, are responsive to outside sensory input, especially late in the sleep cycle). In a sense, your waking-life consciousness takes a break from reality while your brain and body go about their nightly maintenance.

Also worth mentioning: you are never truly unconscious during sleep (even, I believe during delta sleep); your consciousness is functioning just fine, if differently, during sleep. This may explain why you need dreams late in the sleep cycle, Alpha and beta-wave periods, because your consciousness needs something to do to keep it occupied so that you don't wake up too early (did I already say that?).

-- Of course, lucid dreaming is a negation of that exit I just mentioned, and this paradoxical position (still being connected to your waking-life self while your body "assumes" by staying asleep that you're still disconnected) is what makes reaching the state consistently so tricky... being awake while asleep can certainly confuse all those sleep processes, and lead to things like waking up (or never falling asleep during a WILD) or your dreaming mind wrestling lucidity away from you during a dream.

Also. In regards to how long we should stay awake for WBTB...
If say, we stay up for 5 mins, would it take less time to for my body to fall asleep? This is what id assume because I'm more tired after 5 mins opposed to 20. 20 mins extends how long you can stay aware but also increases the time to fall asleep. So if we were able to muster our awareness and self control long enough to keep aware after 5 mins... could we enter dream faster?

If you do your WBTB properly, you will be just as tired after 20 minutes as you were after 5 minutes, so there should be no difference in how long it takes you to get back to sleep after lying back down.

The main purpose of WBTB is to round up some waking-life consciousness without fully exiting your sleep cycle; that's why what you do, and don't do, during WBTB is very important. If you are able to maintain a "dreamy" mindset throughout your WBTB, and avoid doing things that fully wake you up (like using your phone/computer, watching TV, conversing with people, heavy exercise), you will essentially not be exiting your sleep cycle, but rather returning to it when you go back to sleep -- and this return, after lying back down, should take about the same amount of time regardless of the length of your WBTB "up" time. In a sense, you will fall back to sleep just as quickly after a successful one-hour WBTB as you would after a successful 5-minute WBTB.

Successfully returning to a dream after WBTB isn't so much about the length of your "up" time as it is about how well you balanced regathering waking-life self-awareness with remaining in your sleep cycle. WBTB times vary dramatically from person to person: there are some people who need to be up for an hour, some whose WBTB times are so short they're practically doing DEILD's, and everything in between. The key is finding the WBTB time that works best for you, and doing so without being concerned about how quickly you will fall back to sleep.

So I guess the bottom line here is sure, if you are able to fully muster your waking-life self-awareness in 5 minutes then sure, you will return to your dream faster than if you took an hour to do that mustering -- just because you were up for an hour, and that time is way longer than 5 minutes ... but in either case it should take about the same amount of time to get back to sleep after you lay back down; so if you measured fall-back-to-sleep time after the "up" times are accounted for, they probably would be about the same.


tl;dr: Just lying still while awake does not equal sleep; there is much more going on during sleep than just lying still, and dreams are just one of those things. Sleep is sort of an exit of our consciousness from waking-life reality, and you must actually make that exit to be asleep -- but lucidity contradicts that exit, which is what makes it all so tricky. But, in the end, none of this matters: your body knows how to fall asleep, and you know, instinctively, what it means to be asleep... you might consider setting all this stuff aside and just finding through trial and error the WBTB time that works best for you.

Alright. Trial and error seems to be the only thing that advance these practices anyways.

By the by, I did have a LD with MILD like you suggested a few days ago, still shooting for more controllable LDs but, I definitely take victories where I can get them,
Thanks again Sageous

Originally Posted by Sageous

Also worth mentioning: you are never truly unconscious during sleep (even, I believe during delta sleep); your consciousness is functioning just fine, if differently, during sleep. This may explain why you need dreams late in the sleep cycle, Alpha and beta-wave periods, because your consciousness needs something to do to keep it occupied so that you don't wake up too early (did I already say that?).

Trying not to drift too far off-topic, I just wanted to say I found this bit interesting. A few years ago I probably would have said (or agreed with someone saying) that consciousness obviously exists during dreams but not generally during other times of sleep, the caveat being that dreams tend to be difficult to remember so we don't realize most of the time that we've ever experienced them. But during the last few years of developing dream recall and lucidity I've seen a slow increase of recall of NREM events as well, both lucid and nonlucid. Nowhere near as much as recall of “normal” REM dreams, but I certainly seem to have come to notice them a little more often. So that made me realize that consciousness could well exist during all of sleep, with the weak link simply being recall (and perhaps for whatever reason, the recall of NREM just happens to be even weaker than recall of REM dreams, or appears that way).

So.. I've been trying self awareness exercises RCCs and such, and finding odd things happen ever since I've focused on it, but whenever I focus on something and try to do something it becomes harder it seems, after a couple times doing it it won't work for me anymore. When I actually decided to start doing RCCs religiously like my reality checks, I can't do them anymore : they do not yield the same effect. However there is something that usually does so I'll explain it and ask if doing this will yield the effects the RCCs do.
When you say self awareness I think of my consciousness, rather than myself in my physical body, as personally I don't believe that's the real "me"
So I try to connect to that, I will imagine myself viewing my body from a third person perspective. The thing that is watching is what I see as me. And during meditating, I will use methods to clear my mind (imagine a blank chalkboard or something) and just sit there with my presence.
Is this the sort of "self awareness " we need to focus on in a WILD dive?

EDIT: went back and read the previous posts a bit and it kinda answered my question hehe..it seems to be the same. Although just to make sure I'd like to verify .
Also I think I understand WILDing now. You say "do not keep yourself from falling asleep" and "self awareness is a state of mind" so from what that means I can assume that WILDing is falling asleep in this state of mind where your noticing your "self" the entire time.
Yes? So it's just like mediating yourself to sleep? This seems rather advanced...

^^ You seem on the right track, but here are a few thoughts:

Originally Posted by LostTraveller9

So.. I've been trying self awareness exercises RCCs and such, and finding odd things happen ever since I've focused on it, but whenever I focus on something and try to do something it becomes harder it seems, after a couple times doing it it won't work for me anymore. When I actually decided to start doing RCCs religiously like my reality checks, I can't do them anymore : they do not yield the same effect. However there is something that usually does so I'll explain it and ask if doing this will yield the effects the RCCs do.

I'm not sure you should be encountering odd things when doing a RRC. It is meant to do nothing more than help you remember that you are "here," and have a real presence in and interaction with your local reality... if anything, what you should find with your RRC is a very clear, obvious, and occasionally profound "normalnesss," if that makes any sense.

Also, if you are doing RRC's religiously, you might be doing them a bit too often. Consider doing a few less; maybe just a few a day, and combine that with not worrying about having odd things happen and you might see your RRC's working for you.

Bottom line here is that RRC's are not supposed to yield a specific effect; just a sense of presence.

When you say self awareness I think of my consciousness, rather than myself in my physical body, as personally I don't believe that's the real "me"

I understand what you are saying, and agree on some levels, but in the case of RRC's (and WILD/LD'ing in general) I think it may be a good idea to include the presence of your physical body in the equation. After all, even though your consciousness may exist --even if only metaphorically -- outside your physical body, your physical body is very much a participant in your interaction with your local reality. Come dreamtime, of course, your physical body is just a memory (but an important memory!), and you will be aware that everything is you, so during the dream the equation changes a bit... but not only does that equation still include some awareness of your physical body, and don't forget that your consciousness in the dream is the dream, so it might not be a good idea to separate yourself from anything then.

So I try to connect to that, I will imagine myself viewing my body from a third person perspective. The thing that is watching is what I see as me. And during meditating, I will use methods to clear my mind (imagine a blank chalkboard or something) and just sit there with my presence.
Is this the sort of "self awareness " we need to focus on in a WILD dive?

I think I just answered this, but I would lean towards "No," to that question.

With regard to WILD, your presence really isn't something completely separate from your body, or anything else -- especially in a dream, where your presence is everything. A successful WILD is all about a non-dual perspective, I think, so separating yourself in any way might inhibit successfully achieving that sense of everything being "You." During a WILD it's all "You," and establishing a perspective of duality might make it more difficult to fully establish and appreciate your presence in a dream. For instance, assuming there is a presence of "You" that is separate from everything else, which will keep a full appreciation of your presence in a dream almost literally at arm's length.

Bottom line: I believe that in LD'ing, the thing that is watching and the thing that is being watched are the same thing -- it's all you.

EDIT: went back and read the previous posts a bit and it kinda answered my question hehe..it seems to be the same. Although just to make sure I'd like to verify .

Close enough, but hopefully you'll consider the difference I noted.

Also I think I understand WILDing now. You say "do not keep yourself from falling asleep" and "self awareness is a state of mind" so from what that means I can assume that WILDing is falling asleep in this state of mind where your noticing your "self" the entire time.

You got it!

Yes? So it's just like mediating yourself to sleep? This seems rather advanced...

Yes, WILD by many measures is nothing more than another form of meditation. But advanced? I'm not so sure. Meditation (and WILD) may require some practice to properly achieve, but at its core it is really a fairly basic process.

Less on the WILD side, I've been trying to work with dream signs in the mean time because I KNOW all of mine, and you'd figure you'd have no problem with lucid dreaming then right?
With the easy ones (giant planetary bodies in a beautiful starry sky) I can wake up 99.9 percent of the time, that's easy.
But those are only a fraction of my dreams. The rest of the time, I dream of my family and childhood home...
Now, my family and that home are over 1000 miles away, across the country, after I left to my first assignment. Despite this they are just so normal to me, I can never get the feeling while in a dream that "hey wait, I haven't lived over there in more than a year and how did I suddenly get 1000 miles away?"
Throughout my day I imagine them around me and play out in my head what I'd do in the scenario with the whole relaity check "am I dreaming?" Realization and have been doing this for a couple weeks and still nothing.
Any tips for remembering them as my dream sign my good sirs?

^^ I have one tip that your might not want to hear:

Don't bother trying to use such imagery as dream signs.

Seriously. This advice, which might run a bit contrary to what you expected to read, comes from my own experience as well as what I've heard from many others... but I'll use myself as an example to explain.

In my experience, dreams of family (or also, in my case: my old job, my childhood home, or commuting to my old job), are certain to yield zero lucidity, every time. It has always been this way for me, even in spite of the fact that, after decades of practicing lucidity I am at least slightly lucid in every dream that is not about these subjects; fortunately for me they don't occur very often! I've tried everything to turn these recurring themes into usable dream signs (no-brainer, right?), and have always failed. But at least I was able to use the process to develop a theory about why images like family or my childhood home make inoperable dream signs:

Things like family tend to occupy a "timeless" element in your memory and your psyche (and, arguably, your soul, but that is for another conversation), and as such tend to always seem obviously correct to dream-character-You, even when upon waking you, say, wonder why you didn't remember that you moved out of your childhood home years ago. In a sense, certain elements of your life transcend a singular position in the timeline of your life, and become correct at all times, regardless of their place (or absence) in your current waking-life history. In other words, they are so important to you, so involved in your development, and were so much a part of your everyday life for so many years, they have become an intrinsic part of the overall "You," and as such a part, DC You is unable to insert a timeline into their existence -- they don't change; they just always are.

So, in my opinion, using major participants/memories as dream signs is not a great idea, because their timeless place in your heart will prevent you from ever noticing, during the dream, that maybe they shouldn't be appearing as they are.

Others may say differently, but I suggest that you find some less-important repeating imagery for your dream sign, and focus on that; overcoming the timeless nature of the Big Stuff that is deeply embedded into your life might be far more difficult than it sounds at first hearing.

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ I have one tip that your might not want to hear:

Don't bother trying to use such imagery as dream signs.

Seriously. This advice, which might run a bit contrary to what you expected to read, comes from my own experience as well as what I've heard from many others... but I'll use myself as an example to explain.

In my experience, dreams of family (or also, in my case: my old job, my childhood home, or commuting to my old job), are certain to yield zero lucidity, every time. It has always been this way for me, even in spite of the fact that, after decades of practicing lucidity I am at least slightly lucid in every dream that is not about these subjects; fortunately for me they don't occur very often! I've tried everything to turn these recurring themes into usable dream signs (no-brainer, right?), and have always failed. But at least I was able to use the process to develop a theory about why images like family or my childhood home make inoperable dream signs:

Things like family tend to occupy a "timeless" element in your memory and your psyche (and, arguably, your soul, but that is for another conversation), and as such tend to always seem obviously correct to dream-character-You, even when upon waking you, say, wonder why you didn't remember that you moved out of your childhood home years ago. In a sense, certain elements of your life transcend a singular position in the timeline of your life, and become correct at all times, regardless of their place (or absence) in your current waking-life history. In other words, they are so important to you, so involved in your development, and were so much a part of your everyday life for so many years, they have become an intrinsic part of the overall "You," and as such a part, DC You is unable to insert a timeline into their existence -- they don't change; they just always are.

So, in my opinion, using major participants/memories as dream signs is not a great idea, because their timeless place in your heart will prevent you from ever noticing, during the dream, that maybe they shouldn't be appearing as they are.

Others may say differently, but I suggest that you find some less-important repeating imagery for your dream sign, and focus on that; overcoming the timeless nature of the Big Stuff that is deeply embedded into your life might be far more difficult than it sounds at first hearing.

ohh, interesting. I did not expect to hear that. (read that)
I wouldn't argue much with it though, I mean as i have said , I've been trying with no results so id say thats fairly true. It just seems SO normal when I'm dreaming. And it was the place and people that made me what I am.
I will look for some other signs... Maybe less obvious. I know the other ones i have (Two moons, or The planet Saturn in the sky) are dead giveaways.
Thanks for your advice once again, Sageous.

There was once a post by someone (whom as usual, I can't remember ) with a theory on why some dream signs seem to be good at producing lucidity and some weren't. I think it had to do with what types of thoughts those dream scenarios produced. If they were the sorts of thoughts one could readily tie a reminder of lucidity to, they could work, but some things, like childhood elements, don't seem to be so suitable. My memory is too fuzzy to do a very good job explaining it; if I manage to find the post and anyone cares, I could link to it.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Things like family tend to occupy a "timeless" element in your memory and your psyche (and, arguably, your soul, but that is for another conversation), and as such tend to always seem obviously correct to dream-character-You, even when upon waking you, say, wonder why you didn't remember that you moved out of your childhood home years ago. In a sense, certain elements of your life transcend a singular position in the timeline of your life, and become correct at all times, regardless of their place (or absence) in your current waking-life history. In other words, they are so important to you, so involved in your development, and were so much a part of your everyday life for so many years, they have become an intrinsic part of the overall "You," and as such a part, DC You is unable to insert a timeline into their existence -- they don't change; they just always are.

Although I never thought of it quite with those words and from that perspective, I have noticed in recent years something unique about how my own dream-sign-prone childhood memories feel, even to my waking-life mind, that resembles that description. The most significant of these periods (whose elements are those of my earlier life that seem to show up the most commonly in my dreams) ended a little under two decades ago. That was quite a while ago, and it does feel like quite a while ago, and yet it doesn't. Paradoxically, it somehow simultaneously feels like it was not very long ago at all. There is something about that period that seems so vivid and “real” that it feels, in a sense, as if I could almost reach out and touch it right now, as if it must still presently exist “somewhere”, even though I rationally know that this is not the case (at this waking-life here and now, at least).

(Not surprisingly, the imagery associated with these memories seems to be among the most easily and readily produced during my sleep and dreams. I believe I've even had cases of becoming lucid during the initial stages of dream formation and consciously choosing to incubate such imagery simply because it was the first vivid, easy-to-visualize thing that came to mind.)

As prompted, i am going to continue the discussion on this thread.
For the sake of context and info for other readers, i have attached the conversation so far.
I'm not sure if you want me to include the PM itself just like this, but i'll edit it out if you want me to do so. I tried to keep the irrelevant stuff out. And i'll continue my words in another post as i don't want this one to look too cluttered with all of this text.

Originally Posted by Kuyarei

Hello there, Sageous.
As i have suffered from short and unstable LDs for a very long time. In how it typically goes, i would become lucid spontaneously and then just try to stabilize, but it would end kinda shortly. I would note that i feel almost always detached from the environment itself.

I would like to better understand why LDs end so quickly in the first place, which is why i'm raising the following concerns:

- What's the reason that LDs end while normal dreams last so much longer? Is there a necessity for me to attach myself strongly to the dream environment otherwise i would lose it? What if it keeps fading out and it starts feeling like i'm fighting myself to stay in the dream?

- Is it really the case that closing my eyes would end the dream, or is it just a bad schema?

- Can LDs last more than a couple of minutes?

Thanks in advance.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Hi Kuyarei:

As an overall answer, I think your problem might lie in your perspective during your LD's. That detachment you feel could represent the core of your problem. Lucidity is truly empowered by an understanding that the entire dream is You, and there is no viewer "you" looking at the dream, just as the dream body you are occupying is just another detail of the dream. You might want to work on remembering during a LD that there is no dream environment, but only stuff your dreaming mind is providing to populate the universe that is your dream, or you. Okay, I'm sounding a bit like Morpheus from The Matrix, now, but hopefully you get my point: in order for LD's to become natural, consistent, and long-lasting, you need to understand that when lucid, you simply cannot be detached from the environment, because you are the environment.

If you're interested, you might look into writings about the non-dual perspective... if you already know about this, it could be a good time to do a little reviewing. Also, if you've never read The Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep, now might be the time.

Anyway, here are a couple of other bits:

Originally Posted by Kuyarei

- What's the reason that LDs end while normal dreams last so much longer? Is there a necessity for me to attach myself strongly to the dream environment otherwise i would lose it? What if it keeps fading out and it starts feeling like i'm fighting myself to stay in the dream?

There's a lot of depth to that question, but I'll try to touch at least some of it:

There is no reason for LD's to end, if you are able to remember the stuff I wrote above, and calmly enjoy your presence in your dreamworld in a manner that doesn't make the dream an alien place you are visiting, but rather an extension of you, and your imagination... if you can remember that you are always home in a dream, you might find them lasting longer. But there's a catch, here:

Normal dreams go on longer -- or at least seem to -- because your non-lucid self in dreams is completely comfortable with the reality of the dream, so it never becomes detached from the dream environment. Here's a fun fact, though; NLD's might not last nearly as long as you think they do; part of the magic of dreams is that they provide you not only with imagery, but a sense of time and history (all fictional, of course), so that NLD's that might only have lasted a few minutes in real time are remembered as going on for hours, or even longer. So what this could mean is that, when lucid, you are witnessing your dreams in the real time in which they occur, meaning that this is actually how long your dreams normally last, but when not lucid, you are convinced by your dreaming mind that more time is passing.

There's no need to be concerned about this, though, because the dreaming mind is infinitely flexible. Even if the dreams you've been creating all your life are very short, with practice -- and a firm non-dual perspective -- you can learn to stretch the time your dreams last to the limits of your sleeping body (aka, you can dream as long as you are asleep, especially late in the sleep cycle).

Also, there is no necessity for you to attach yourself to anything in a dream; indeed, attaching yourself to strongly to a dream environment might turn into a sort of surrender to the "reality" of the dream, which will likely lead to a loss of lucidity.

- Is it really the case that closing my eyes would end the dream, or is it just a bad schema?

Not in my experience. I close my dream eyes all the time, and the dream never ends; sometimes it's different when I open my dream eyes, but still there. The trick here, I think, is in remembering that you are not closing your eyes, ever, in a dream, because your eyes are part of your sleeping body and have nothing to do with the dream. I think dreams ending when dream eyes are closed is centered more on expectation than on any dream given dream parameters...expectation that could be sourced less in experience than in what you read on the internet, BTW!

- Can LDs last more than a couple of minutes?

Sure. I think I already said this, but LD's can last for as long as you are asleep -- longer, in fact, if you learn to chain your LD's across awakenings with DEILD. I've had LD's last as long as an hour or more on their own, and over five hours with DEILD chaining. I think the first step in getting your LD's to last more than a few minutes is to firmly believe that they will last longer; if you can exist in your dream without concern for how long it lasts, you might find it lasting much longer.

I'm not sure I made much sense here, but I hope I helped.


Sageous

Originally Posted by Sageous

As an overall answer, I think your problem might lie in your perspective during your LD's. That detachment you feel could represent the core of your problem. Lucidity is truly empowered by an understanding that the entire dream is You, and there is no viewer "you" looking at the dream, just as the dream body you are occupying is just another detail of the dream. You might want to work on remembering during a LD that there is no dream environment, but only stuff your dreaming mind is providing to populate the universe that is your dream, or you. Okay, I'm sounding a bit like Morpheus from The Matrix, now, but hopefully you get my point: in order for LD's to become natural, consistent, and long-lasting, you need to understand that when lucid, you simply cannot be detached from the environment, because you are the environment.

If you're interested, you might look into writings about the non-dual perspective... if you already know about this, it could be a good time to do a little reviewing. Also, if you've never read The Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep, now might be the time.

Thanks for replying to my initial message.
What you said was insightful and i understood some ideas because of it. I have some extended concerns about the topic of anchoring/stabilization itself. If you don't mind, and i hope i'm not sounding like i'm ignoring your previous suggestions, i want to clear up some contradictions i have in my head.

The first thing i would like to bring up is how the idea of stabilization is popular as the "highten your dream senses to stay in the dream" argument that i've seen countlessly in almost all stabilization tutorials and such. In your message, you said that there is no need to attach myself to the dream environment since it's a part of me and not an external object that would exist without my attention. I do understand that so far, but what's the reason that people give this importance to dream senses being vivid for the dream itself to stay in place?

Right now, i'm starting to see that my dreams collapsing may not really be what i think it is. In my most recent LD, i used meditation to keep my consciousness with me as i went through those moments of my senses fading away and what i thought was me waking up:

I recalled my intentions to use meditation as a tool of stabilization, so i sat down cross-legged on the ground and started putting my attention on my breathing. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have worked since everything went pitch-black very shortly.

I continued my attention even as it felt like the dream itself ended, but surprisingly i found myself back again in another lucid environment.

Inbetween the two dreams (?), i think i had a game menu screen appear with text relevant to how i would move onto another lucid dream or not. I can't remember it very clearly.

I'm not sure what to make of this. I might be letting my expectations lead to this happening, or it might be something else. Either way, i'm going to be observing this in my next lucids to see what it really is. In this manner, i may learn some things relevant to it.