A record of my Quest for Lucidity

Quest for Lucidity
1

Hi there,

I just stumbled upon your site the other day while running through a fitness website. They mentioned Lucid Dreaming as a way to meditate, then pointed to this site.

I can’t believe what i’m reading to be honest and just wanted to chime in and speak to like minded people here in order to share experiences.

I’ve not being trying long, but I’ve been basically trying to implement the MILD technique, but being a father of two, this can be difficult at times. Sometimes, by the time I’ve woken up, I don’t want to wake my kids up and give my wife a hard time before I go to work. I don’t get to fill in my dream diary, but I do actively try to recall my dreams.

It’s a weird feeling, i’m not sure how other people perceive “normal dreams” but to me, its more of a retrospective experience. Kind of like, I “did” do that, or I did “experience” something, but its more like it was in the distant past, it seems grey, monochrome, muddled, and even though I know I had an elaborate dream, i can only remember parts of it, if I focus very hard on remembering the moment I wake.

I spoke to my wife about this, because she is into Reiki. She told me that when she dreams, the dream is no different than me and her talking together right now. She is in the dream, although she says she has no free will, its like watching a film to her. I was astonished to hear her dream experiences are that vivid. She was astonished to hear that mine are not like hers.

So, my question to you all is. How do you experience “normal dreams” and how do they differ to “lucid dreams”? I’m a pragmatic and evidence based person, even though i am spiritual at times, I like to see evidence and I have trouble internalising the notion that, a dream could be a real to me as I am typing on this keyboard now.

In my dream last night, I know a lot of things happened, some of them far fetched, but I can only recall a fraction of what happened, people I recognise. I don;t recognise motivation or the purpose for the things I’m doing in the dream. One minute I could be driving, searching for something. I feel that the drving was purposeful, but when I wake up, I cannot recall why. The dream seems like i didnt really experience it, like it is just a memory of something that never happened. not a tangible reality like you all describe over here.

On that, I really would like to have lucid dreaming as a part of my life. I have always been a day dreamer, creative and very inward thinking. I really live life in the present, and my mind wanders to fantasy land all the time. I’m going to continue with MILD every night, and my wife is going to teach me meditation through her Reiki studies.

I also have a great deal of trouble recognising that I am in a dream. I go to bed with the intention to remember, and I have been doing my Reality Checks daily. But my “dream self” simply does not even entertain the fact that I am dreaming. In fact, the dream does not feel in the present tense at all, when I wake up, I feel the dream was only ever a memory, and with that, I am unable to influence it because it didn’t happen in real time. It’s difficult to explain.

I just hope it happens for me, even if I have to wait. The stories of some people waiting years to experience this amazing phenomenon dampens my spirits somewhat.

Thanks for reading, i’d love to get a discussion going. Please feel free to come back with your thoughts and your experiences.

Edit: i wanted to add a couple of days ago I had a very vivid dream (the most vivid ive had) where I was ni my bedroom, in my bed, exactly as I had fallen asleep. But my wardrobe was on the ceiling. Instead of trying a reality check, I almost instantly knew I was in a dream, so i tried rubbing my hands together and throwing myself backwards, but I just woke up having had a normal dream. The sensation wasn’t as everyone says, it was very vivid, but didnt feel real at all.

So, do you think this was a lucid dream? I was using the SSILD method, I think im going to try and stick to that.

2

Hi.
Lucid dreaming can take days or months to first happen.
If you feel under pressure because you can’t have one now you’re not going anywhere.
Also, you should focus on a single technique for a time long enough to perceive it as an habit. The reality checks work because in the dreams there is high probability to perform actions that we do habitually.
The only way to become advanced lucid dreamers is to do it for years and focus everyday on it. Otherwise is like to try to play bach at the piano after the first piano lesson. Very unlikely.

3

Hi, and welcome to LD4all!

The definition we use on this forum is this: If you know it is a dream, it is a lucid dream. The term “normal dream” is a bit controversial, because for some people, the lucid dreams are the normal one. Many prefer calling them “non lucid dreams” instead.

For me, in a fully lucid dream, I have all my memories from waking life: who I am, where I went to sleep, which day it is, etc. I am conscious and can think normally. I have free will.

In a “normal” dream, the logic is often more floating, scenes can randomly change, I can be somebody else or simply following a script. There have also been intermediate dreams, where I have known that this isn’t real, but haven’t become fully conscious.

Some people feel that the term “conscious dream” is a more accurate description than “lucid dream”. What you describe is a good example of a first lucid dream. :cool: It is very common to wake up shortly after realising that it is a dream. It is also a very good sign! Now you know what it feels like to know that you are dreaming. I’d recommend reading up on ways to keep calm and prolonging the lucidity. Simply stopping and looking around can do wonders.

4

Thanks for the replies.

Another problem I have is how to fit in my practice (especially WILD) when I have two children waking me up all the time (I love my kids don’t get me wrong). Even when my wife takes them downstairs in the morning before work (we share that responsibility of course :razz:) I cannot get back to sleep because of the noise. I try to meditate, and I have had some success at feeling a semi trance like state where my body feels heavy, but I am yet to silence my inner voice.

I think I need to work on two things:

  1. Dream Recall
  2. Meditation and learning to improve my self awareness through meditation.

On the subject of Lucid vs Non Lucid. I’ve definitely had dreams where I realise im in a dream and start flying around and such like, especially when I was younger. I was talking to my brother about this and he reminded me that I had told him about these kind of dreams. But never to I remember having dreams where the clarity of thought is that of the real world. It seems “scripted” and “dull” as you explained.

I really want this and need this in my life. I’ve not been trying long.

I’d really like to hear some stories and experiences from others who were at the same stage as me, or perhaps in a similar life situation as me with family, and honestly had success with making this a reality?

5

Hey DreamerDad.

I’m quite new to all this too, but I’ve been lucky enough to have about 14 proper LD’s. I have a 2 year old toddler, and have been trying WILD as well as other techniques, but thinking about it WILD probably isn’t the best one if you’ve young kids.

As a parent, you’re programmed to wake up when you hear a baby monitor making noise, or if you hear them let out a cry and during WILD, a big part of it might be that you’ll hear noises as you get closer to sleep paralysis.

Your instinct as a parent of young kids would be to wake up or focus on these noises, when for WILD to work you really need to be just accepting these noises but not reacting to them. So to me, and others might disagree, but it seems that WILD is quite a difficult one for us new parents or people in noisy households to work with.

I too didn’t really remember any dreams when I started, I thought I didn’t actually have any, and I was also crap at writing down dreams with a pen so I found an app, “Awoken” on android, which is a dream diary, and find it way easier to just pick that up in the middle of the night, write in a few key points of anything I remembered and go back to sleep using MILD.

Once I started writing them down, I started remembering more and more details, and noticed dreamsigns and everything. (School, my old classmates and workmates and my old job are big ones for me). So don’t lose heart if you think you can’t remember your dreams, once you start taking proper note of even little bits, you remember, more and more details will start to emerge from your memory.

Going back to a technique that might suit, for me, I’m going all out now, and trying to develop a “lucid mindset”. There’s a post on here by Robert Waggoner (I recommend his book btw too) where he talks to a ultra-frequent lucid dreamer, who over the years had gotten into the mental habit of asking herself the question, " What was I just doing?" in waking life. Over time that transfered over to her asking it in her dreams and from that questioning she could become lucid every time.

To me this seems like the Holy Grail for LD’s. It would obviously take time (maybe a lot!) for this mental habit to work it’s way over from WL to DL, but the rewards, with no need to wake up, just have that awareness in your dreams to become lucid by asking yourself “What was I just doing?”, would be amazing. This is what I am going to work towards now, and the fact that you said you really want lucid dreaming in your life seems like you could be willing to put the effort in too.

This is all just my take on things, some of the more experienced LDers on here might have better advice for you, but being just a small bit past where you are now with LD’s, I hope this helps some bit.

Good luck on your journey!

Strangegravy

That post I mentioned. --> Lucid Mindset

6

Hey, thanks for the great reply,its great to finally meet another parent and aspiring Lucid dreamer. Congratulations on your success. It really is a challenge when you see all these amazing techniques you are unable to carry out. Even WBTB is challenging because it involves getting out of bed, or moving in some way, which invariably wakes the baby up. I’ve been able to try WILD’ing, as my son can sleep for long periods, and when he wakes in the night I get to go asleep again. In fact thats when I had my first awareness in a non lucid dream, it didn’t last long, but it was so much clearer than any other dream ive had. Quite scary really!

Can you elaborate a bit more on your journey to Lucid Dreaming? How did you first dreams come about? What did they feel and look like? I’m going to try and ask the lucid mindset question now and give that a try, thanks for the great post.

Incidentally, this is the the technique I used when I had my, whatever it was… :razz:

https://www.dreamviews.com/induction-techniques/129734-senses-initiated-lucid-dream-ssild.html

If I wake up in the night, this is the technique i use, then I roll over and go back to sleep.

7

I think it can be a bit daunting when you see all these techniques, but a lot of the steps are quite similar, it’s up to you to find something that works for you, even if it’s a variation of a couple of them.

My first lucid dream was by accident, in my dream I fell in a pool of water, and I took a breathe, and I found I could breathe! I was like, “OMG… I’m dreaming, I’m gonna fly!” I took off straight up higher and higher, everything was so vivid, before starting to freak out that I was going up too high and then woke up. Was very short but the feeling was euphoric. That was it then, I was hooked.

I was in College as a mature student though so didn’t have time to really put into it, but bought three books, Stephen LaBerge’s, Robert Waggoner’s and a “Lucid Dream in 30 Days” guide, and dipped into them when I could.

Then back in July of this year, I downloaded the Awoken app and started keeping a DJ. I’ve had mixed results, none have lasted as long as I wanted but I have spoken to DC’s (They looked at me like I was crazy!), think I’ve figured out flying better now, can up the lucidity of the dream now too and I’m getting better at stabilising the dream, but I always get too excited and wake up too soon, so working on keeping calm and relaxed is my next goal. (Too many damn beautiful women in dreams!!) :smile:

One massive piece of advice is not to try too hard and get anxious or mad if it’s not happening as quick as you want it, because it just won’t happen at all then.

Relax about it but really try to increase your awareness in WL, that’s the key I think, it’ll soon enough then start to transfer over to your dreams.

As someone said if you’re not natural, then you have to train yourself, and like music, that means learning the notes, then chords, then one hand, then two hands, then you can start to compose your symphony.

Again, this is only my quite amateur take on things, but hopefully it helps you to keep it up. I notice a lot of usernames log in for about a month or two and then seem to disappear, I don’t want to be one of them. :smile:

8

Hey, thanks for the response.

Its amazing to hear your story. Lucid dreaming by accident! I wish I could do that. Perhaps I have and I just don’t remember it? I have to confess I’ve not even been at this “properly” for a week yet, its just blown me away what people are saying though about it, I mean, as I said I have always been a day dreamer. I just need this in my life so much, I think if I get good at it, I would be able to confront so many RL problems by searching my subconscious.

Although hot women in dreams is another issue lol.

I’d love to hear some other people chime in with their own quests for lucidity. :smile: Let me know if you have any more progress with your Lucid Mindset.

9

For me the difference between how clear or vivid a dream feels like, compared to our experience in our everyday lives, depends on the amount of awareness that we bring into the dream. Awareness is everything when going for lucid dreams. A lucid dream is just having the least amount of awareness necessary for you to know that you’re in fact dreaming while in a dream. That small boost in awareness that manages to trigger lucidity can increase the vividness of the dream to incredible levels.

Still, one can be aware of the fact that he/she is dreaming, and feel like one is following the dream’s plot all the way through. That’s only natural, as much more training is needed to increase one’s overall awareness. When in full awareness, our actions, our thinking, our experience, it all looks as real as waking life does. Many times the experience manages to become far more vivid than when we’re awake, it’s really breathtaking.

Building a lucid mindset, a state of mind in awareness, is the best way to go for the achievement of long lasting, frequent lucid dreams. Practices that allow for us to train awareness, like mindfulness meditation, or through any other method, produces long lasting results in our ability to lucid dream.

In the end, it all boils down to what actions we take towards making progress in this skill. While I’m no parent, what I can only recommend to you is that you focus your practice around the development of a state of mind in awareness. That and that you strive for allowing yourself to sleep healthy whenever you can, as sleep is a determinant factor that boosts our chances for inducing lucid dreams. If you can sustain such a ‘lucid’ mindset throughout much of your day to day experience, then rest assured this mindset will slowly but surely find its way into your dreams, delivering not only incredibly vivid dreams, but also the endless extent of our subconscious for us to explore and creatively use.

10

Thanks for your insight, its very much appreciated.

Last night, using a seemingly too simple to be true method published on these forums, I held my right nostril while sleeping and took 50 breaths, i then rolled over and went to sleep telling myself I would be aware in the dream. I had a really vivid dream that felt a lot more clear than my previous dreams, but no awareness in there. It’s like, my dream self cannot even entertain the fact that the dream is not reality. Absolutely ridiculous things are happening, but i just go with the flow. I wake up and am very frustrated at my lack of perception in the dream world.

I write in my dream journal every day, I’ve not really noticed a common theme yet, I’ve been at home, at a different home, at work, in school, doing different things every time. I’m doing my RC every day and asking myself the question, “what was I just doing?”. The only time I’ve had any sense of awareness in the dream, was when I woke in my bed, in exactly the same position I was when I went to bed, and the wardrobe was upside down. That DID trigger awareness, but not for long, and I can say it was the most vivid experience of the dream world that even now I question, was it really a dream? Or was I just groggy and not seeing things properly…

Do you have any practical experience of developing your lucid mindset and how it brought your lucidity to the fore?

Thanks again for the discussion i’m enjoying it immensely.

11

When in a dream it appears as if our reasoning and logical mindset is shut down. This is why we can go about as doing improbable or impossible things in the dream world without much thinking about it. We’re in the script of the dream, playing our part to our fullest capacity. In a way, we’re sort of in the moment of things as we go about in the dream, yet always without any sense of awareness about the situation.

There are some key points to understand when training awareness. Firs of all, reality checks are to be done with the whole purpose of it letting you become more aware of what you’re doing and your surroundings. Questions that involve for you to think for the answer are much more beneficial than overall yes or no questions. Example of these include: Where am I and how did I got here? What was I just doing?

Now, I don’t trust much dream signs and their use in the overall induction of lucidity, as the nature of a dream is unpredictable. Anything that happens in a dream can change radically from night to night, even from dream to dream! What I’ll be doing this very night in my dreams could differ entirely with where I’ll be going and what I’ll be doing the very next dream. Nonetheless, certain situations and/or elements appear with more frequency than others. The thing is, we don’t know when exactly these situations might appear.

It’s easier if we focus our attention to our state of mind, as it’s an internal process that follows us wherever we go. Though we might find ourselves doing all sorts of things in the dream that don’t make sense, we can train our mind into achieving awareness of the situation, and our actions, and recognizing when that awareness is lost.

As for practices go that you can use to train awareness, the best I’ve found are meditation (as in mindfulness), and ADA (All Day Awareness), a practice you can go check out here in this forum. Between both of these practices, I’ve heard people recommend meditation as the best and most efficient way to train awareness, though one can also use ADA with great efficiency.

It’s very common to have lucid dreams “out of the blue” when starting practicing for lucidity. Initially, you’ll feel that becoming aware of the fact that you’re dreaming is something that happens “out of pure luck”. If you continue practicing consistently, you’ll begin to find yourself becoming aware of the dream world through a much more logical and deductive reasoning of the situation, than just: “I suddenly thought that I could be dreaming.”

For example, my first 7 lucid dreams were along the lines of: “I was walking around in my house, when it suddenly hit me that I could be dreaming.” The recent 8th and 9th lucid dreams have now been: "I’m walking down the stairs, when I see the figure of the batman walking around the kitchen. Then I immediately realize about this situation, and my reasoning is almost instantaneous: “Batman isn’t real, he’s a character out of comic books and movies, therefore this must be a dream. I’m dreaming!” (The text between quotation marks describes how the reasoning would go for me to deduce whether I’m in a dream or not. In reality, all this reasoning happens in a matter of 2 or 3 seconds, as in you know the batman isn’t real, ergo, you know this is a dream.)

I’m still a beginner in this skill, so what I’m describing here are only my observations throughout this first year of being involved with lucidity. It’s only these past 3 months where I have been focusing on it with more diligence and consistency, so bear in mind I have much to learn about lucidity. I’m sure much more experienced users in this forum can offer greater insight as far as lucid dreaming goes.

12

I first heard about lucid dreaming around this time last year, so it’s coming up to 12 months of practice. I’ve clocked up 64 lucid dreams so far, most of them very short and unimpressive but when you’re starting it’s important to celebrate every success, no matter how small…

The first few months there were a couple of lucid moments and straight away I woke up, but stuck with it. The first ‘proper’ lucid dream was about four months later. Up until this point I’d mostly being using frequent reality checks and the MILD technique to ‘program’ myself to think about dreaming. ( ‘When I wake up, I will remember my dreams.’ and ‘I am dreaming.’)

At this point I was averaging a couple of lucids a month and my control was terrible. It wasn’t enough! It was around that time I discovered this forum and joined… :happy:

After reading about ADA and developing a lucid mindset, I also tried (and failed, repeatedly), to start a meditation practice. ADA for me consisted of focusing on the small details of everything around me as often as I remembered. So I’d notice the screws that held the doors in place, the feel of the door handle, the noise of my footsteps, the sound of my breathing, the scratch of my work shirt collar against my neck… Now I didn’t manage this all the time, but whenever I remembered I’d do this and RC, search around for dream signs, and try to keep that ‘hyper awareness’ going for as long as possible. This catapulted me to around 10 lucid dreams a month.

I’m still astounded by the number of dream signs I miss, and how completely bonkers my dreams are. Anyways, if this helps you at all, great. If you have any questions, feel free… and if you have any advice on starting and keeping a meditation practice going, please share. :cool:

13

Hi Yume,

Zaitei, yume wo mite imasen. kawaii sou ne? :content:

Thanks for your advice. I am trying to develop a lucid mindset, by doing reality checks and asking myself, “how did I get here” or “what was I doing”. What is ADA? i;ve not heard of that?

In terms of meditation, i’ve tried to use the Lucid Dream on Command technique for inducing WILD through meditation. So far, iv’e had little success. As others have stated in this thread, having two kids and a busy life is not conducive to entering the trance state… too many distractions. SO i’ve moved on to using SSILD and trying to develop the lucid mindset. So far, its not worked, I just completely fail to notice, or even slightly entertain the notion, I am dreaming. Which is very very annoying and frustrating when I wake up. I want to experience this so much.

Also, I don’t know why, but when I try to WILD, and i’m feeling like im starting to feel some kind of sensation, any noise or bump in the house will pull me out, I am a bit skittish when people have described seeing things in their room, and with the kids with me I panic easily in case I think that something is in with the kids, i’m not sure I could rationalise that.

i always seem to visualise scary things and i’m not good at controlling what my subconscious shows me (even though i’ve never been at the HI stage yet, I still imagine scary things involuntarily).

I’m trying to work on two things

  1. Recall.
  2. Awareness.

Hopefully it will happen for me :help: :cry:

14

It will happen! It takes time, and it is important to not stress out about it and stay positive. Keep focusing on recall and awareness. It does work. :smile:

ADA = All Day Awareness. It is a form of waking meditation. Here is the tutorial post.

I don’t have kids, but my other half does shift work so I have a constantly changing wake up time. Initially, the mantra ‘When I wake up, I will remember my dreams.’ helped me. At any point that I wake up during the night, I attempt to lie still and question what I was just doing to try and recall my dreams. Any fragments I then note down before going back to sleep. Of course, sometimes I’m lazy and fall back to sleep anyway…

Watashi wa nihongo o benkyo shiyou to shite iru… mada heta desu
(Actually, learning Japanese is what lead me to a post on Lucid Dreaming in the first place!)

15

maa maa jouzu desu. ganbatte ne :tongue:

I will take your advice on board and hope and pray it happens. If it is everything Laberge and others say it is, I feel like its going to really give me something spiritually I felt has always been missing from my life. :neutral:

16

Just to continue this topic as my adventures towards lucid dreaming continue… Last night I had a dream that I woke up in bed and decided to do a WILD, because I must have thought I was about to go back into REM. I dreamt I could see a dream forming like a cartoon, it was vivid with lots of colour. My wife woke up and told me to stop snoring and broke the WILD.

I asked her if she asked me to stop snoring in the night and she said no… So this must have been a false awakening, albeit, inside of a normal dream. Is that the definition of a FA? A ND where you are waking in your bed?

Then I dreamt I was in a massive space battle, which was pretty awesome… Damn how I wish I would have gone lucid in that one…

I STILL am not realising in my dream to recognise any dream signs!! So frustrating!! … >-<!!! I was in a SPACE BATTLE for gods sake… (bangs head)