I’ve been at the lucid dreaming (attempts anyway) for a couple of months now and seem to be having some difficulty. I’ve been working on my journal, although the motivation kind of ebbs and flows. Same with the RCs throughout the day. I’ve been getting to bed earlier, which has some nice side effects 
but the early morning in our household is often a bit chaotic. I get up at 5:30 for work and we have 3 kids and 2 cats, any or all of which may be up or starting to get up before me. There have been a few times like this morning where I wake up from a dream at about 4 or 4:30, write down what I can remember and then try to hold an intention to remind myself I’m dreaming while I fall asleep (MILD, right?). This morning I tried a meditation I read in LaBerge and focused on a lotus flower with a flame in it, positioned on my throat. I remember drowsing and getting some interesting HI, including a rather striking image of flying around a canyon of some sort. I was still conscious of our son, who was in bed with us and the cats who were getting restless for breakfast, but I never lost conscioussness or fell asleep. I do remember trying not to get frustrated with the interruptions and just keep holding the intention and belief that I was on the right track and that even if not this morning, eventually I will become lucid in a dream.
Am I on the right track? It seems the only dreams I recall well enough to even remember to try to write down are at about this time of the morning. I’m assuming I don’t have to write down every dream I have, right? I like the effects of the focus exercise (lotus/flame). I believe that’s called TILD, correct?
Any thoughts or feedback is welcome, as is encouragement. 
Hello exquisitive,
and wellcom to ld4all. 
It all sounds good to me. You might try working on your motivation a bit, 
but other then that I don’t see anything wrong with what you are doing. (just maybe not having any LD’s yet. )
I am not sure from your discription if you are doing MILD, or WILD. HI normaly is something that you get while trying WILD. If you are doing MILD, then you go to sleep as normal. You just do the MILD stuff for a while before that.
With WILD, you try to keep your mind awake while your body goes to sleep and that is when HH, including HI happens.
Generaly, for beginers, modivation with some form of DILD, like MILD gets you the first LD within a few weeks. Some of us have more problems getting that first LD, just keep at it, and you will get your first LD. After that it gets easyer.
don
Thanks Don. I’ve been familiar with HI for a long time, even though I’ve only known about it by that name since I started getting into lucid dreaming a few months back. I frequently have had experiences of half-dream imagery coming to me as I’m falling asleep. They definitely have a different quality from the conscious thought I might usually have (remembering the day just past or thinking about the next day) in that they are unusually vivid and have a stream of consciousness feel to them. The content is usually something I have not experienced and I see and interact with people I don’t recognize, almost like participating in a movie. I used to think it was a little weird, although I usually enjoyed it. Then I heard about hypnagogic imagery in a CBC show about the brain’s activities in sleep.
It was this episode of Ideas on CBC, combined with a podcast on Steve Pavlina’s site about lucid dreaming that got me started thinking that it would be something I’d like to try. I remember hearing about it when I was a kid, back in the 70’s, but it was one of those sort of way-out things that my parents would hear about and my more orthodox teachers and school-mates would think was just weird (or worse). It was fun to hear that there’s a bit more to it and it’s being considered a bit more legitimately now.
It’ll come, and you’re right. I think it’s my motivation that needs the most work right now. Thanks!
If you get HI so easaly, and you can wake up about 5 to 6 hours after you first go to sleep, you might try WILD. Some people can enter their HI when they do WILD. That can be a very good way to have an LD. I do WILD, but have never been able to enter my HI. It does get very real, like watching a movie, but I always have a short blackout between that and being in a dream.
If you do try it, look at the big WILD topic first, and remember to stay calm when you get into an LD. 
Good luck,
don