Controlling my sleep and other questions

Quest for Lucidity
1

Hi,

I’ve been reading and reading the last few days; I got really caught up in this big mystery after watching Linklater’s excellent film Waking Life. I’d never heard of such thing as a lucid dream before, and I clearly doubted the fact that there were no boundaries. Though, I’ve gathered I was very wrong, and I’ve also decided that this is something I really want to do.

I love the idea of escapism. I do read books, I do play (role playing) games, I do watch movies, and sometimes I feel like being somewhere else, but all over I find nothing more satysfying than simply daydreaming. Having discovered this, though, I figured it’s no turning back. This is my thing.

I reached lucidity though DILD once, but as many others, I woke very quickly. It did although save my day; I’ve never felt something so glorious before (I had lots of bullets in my head and realised they shouldn’t make me feel good).

I have been doing reality checks several times a day since monday, and I am thinking, believing and deciding that I will find lucidity the very next night. I am also writing a dream journal, which forces me to get up half an hour earlier. I also figured I should go much earlier to bed. I am trying to interpret your ideas about lucid living and put them into real life. All over, my life has been been better, and I hope there’s more to come. Still, there’s some questions:

I don’t wake up before war is raging outside. OK, admittedly, my pretty ordinary alarm clock does do the job, but I’ve gathered that it’s not the ultimate thing when doing a WBTB and then WILD. So, although it isn’t directly related to LD, how the heck can one program oneself to wake every time one has had a dream, for instance? With me it’s like, when I sleep, I sleep. I don’t wake during nights unless something very special have happened. Does that mean I’m a “deep sleeper”, and does that have a positive or negative effect on my actual abilities to lucid dream? But it’s this “wake-by-myself-during-night”-thing I’m really curious about. It sounds like a neat future. Can I practice it?

OK, that actually seemed to be the main question. I’m always reluctant to join a new forum with a post of this length, but now it’s done. I’ll probably bring up more questions very soon. Thanks alot for reading, and wish my good luck. :smile:

Other advice are of course greatly appreciated.

J-

Edit: One more thing, I’m sure you can get addicted to just about anything, but how is it with lucid dreaming? Have people literally got addicted to having these dreams… on such a level that they sleep far more than actually necessary? Like if you on a daily basis are impatient to get home to have a nap… not because you’re tired, but simply to have the lucid dream?

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Hi LordAsriel, welcome to the LD4ALL forum!

This is possible, and you can train yourself to do it. I will tell you how I learned myself to wake up during the night. First of all I don’t sleep very deep, so that might have helped. To start, I used to drink a lot of tea in the evening before I went to bed (like 2 huge cups). Then, I just went to bed thinking, “if I need a piss, I’ll wake up and go”. This actually worked very well for me, and nowadays I have become used to waking up 1 or 2 times a night automatically. You can also try a kind of MILD-selfhypnosis by repeating before you sleep “after I had (some) dreams, I will wake up and remember them”, or combine these 2 techniques.

However, since you are a deep sleeper, achieving this might be hard, but perhaps not. Remember, since expectations rule a large part of what happens during sleep, expect these techniques to work! Just try it a few times (the more the better) and see what does the trick for you. As to the influence of being a deep sleeper on having LD’s, I dont think there is a big effect, perhaps a positive one; you might not wake up so fast as light sleepers.

Well, LDing is very fun! So, in that sence it can be somewhat addicting, just as playing a game can be or any other thing that is fun. If you are healthy psychologically, I think you can handle it. Moreover, you have only a limited amount of REM any night, so you can’t LD all day anyway (since the majority of LD’s happen in REM). This acts as a kind of natural limit to any LD-addiction.

Well so far my reply, I hope it helps you somewhat, and good luck with getting lucid!

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Oh, I love these warm welcoms. Thank you. :smile:

I like the idea of selfhypnosis or whatever you call it, although I doubted it at first. The night before last night I did excactly what you mentioned as an alternative method: I absolutely convinced myself I would wake up when I’d dreamt some dreams. My alarm clock was set to make a terrible noise at 6.30. I woke 6.15, which is highly unnatural. The very same thing happened this morning. I woke at 6.15 although I had gone to bed ninety minutes later. Maybe it’s working? Preferably I should wake earlier though; I’ll try to drink some glasses before bedtime. So, good suggestions. Thanks. :smile:

Edit: And last night I dreamt I told my sisters how wonderful lucid dreaming was. Must mean I’m closing in. :-1

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Yep, definately getting close!