First lucid dream? Questions?

After 40 nights of training and a few WBTB attempts i finally had my first lucid dream using WBTB then MILD turn3. I thought I would post it here because it was an interesting dream and my lucidity was high but I experienced a few problems…heres the dream:

I’m in a new house and I have a new bed but somehow I know that this is my home. I am going to go to sleep to attempt a lucid dream. Mom and dad and the rest of the family are up but at least they are just talking and so i try to shun out their voices. I fall asleep and start to dream (*its a dream inside a dream) about walking through the snow toward a dumpster or something. I shovel some of the snow from the black dumpster and see a red plastic ramp in the dumpster. Then I wake up (*from the dream inside the dream, not in reality) in my ‘new’ room in my ‘new’ house. I decide that I want to go back to sleep and re-enter that dream and become lucid. I fall asleep again and amazingly I have the same ‘dream inside a dream’. I walk to the dumpster and shovel some snow off of it just like the last dream. I also see the red plastic thing that I think is a large red ramp. This is when I realize I’m dreaming and decide to do a reality check. I know I’m dreaming but I’m curious as to what my hands look like and if they actually look different in a dream. I look at my hands. I expected to have normal hands but they actually looked very ghostly and transparent with some spots being more vivid than others as if the transparencies overlap. Now I’m absolutely positive I’m dreaming and all of a sudden the scenery starts to distort and fade. I start to fall. I cant move. I try to fly but it wont work. I try the swimming technique but it doesnt do anything. The scenery is completely distorted as if it is ‘eating’ me and its black and white and i can move my body but I cant actually GO anywhere. Finally I get a hold of myself. The scenery is still distorted buy at least its ‘solid’. I decide to jump off the black structure I’m standing on that is about two stories high. I dont even try to fly i just face plant into the ground below. Its painless and I get up. I start thinking how amazing this is and about waking up. I think about weather i can hear things that are happening in the ‘real’ world. I try to keep my mind on dreaming and now on waking up but I can see the white fence that is outside my window from my ‘new’ bed out of the corner of my eye. I try to focus on the dream but dont think about the ways to lengthen the dreams and eventually I have a false awakening and I’m laying in my ‘new’ bed and in my ‘new’ house. I dont even fantisize about my lucid dream or write it down. I lose lucidness because I think I’m awake. I go outside and everything is perfect. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, the grass is green. I want to sort of explore my ‘new’ neighborhood. I go up to the neighbors house and see something of theirs and fiddle around with it but go back to my house when I think the neighbors might not like me fiddling with it. I go back inside and mom comments that my bed is right next to the window where the sun is bright and implys that she would move it so the sun wont wake me or be too hot. Mom and dad are sorting out these wing nuts or something and cant figure out how they are supposed to categorize them.

Thats all i remember…Also, when I used the MILD technique to induce this lucid dream i did it differently. Instead of focusing on my intention to lucid dream, i just visualized myself doing reality checks over and over again while repeating the mantra “i will do a reality check” maybe it works better that way? also should I write down my ENTIRE dream every night or just enough to provide key elements? it takes some time first to remember then to write down everything…Also, If I stop attempting to recall dreams for a while will my dream recall be hard to get back and will i have to work my way back up? recently I have only been writing fragments of my dream down as they come to my mind (rather than doing this and putting it together to form a story) so will this cripple my ‘quest for lucidity’ even if i continue to do RCs and MILD? Also How can I solve the problems I faced in my lucid dream like not being able to move and preventing the environment from distorting?

Hey, congrats on your LD! :happy:

The problems you had were normal, unfortunately. I don’t know what to say to help except keep up the good work and read more stuff on the forum :tongue: With time and practice, after a few LD’s they will get better and you’ll learn trick to make things more stable.

The more you write in your DJ the more you remember. If you want better recall you should write down EVERYTHING you remember. I know it can be a pain in hte butt :sad: you can type it out if you prefer… I think if you stop your DR might decrease. But as long as you focus on remembering dreams you’ll still have some DR. I do believe, and hope, that after we get to a specific level of recall (which might be pretty high :tongue:) it kind of maintains itself. Not sure though.

Anyway, now you know how it feels to be lucid! Your next LD should be easier. Try using your variation of MILD a few more times and see if it works. What matters is what works for you personaly. Good luck! :smile:

Good job on your first LD!

Getting lucid once makes it easier to get Lucid Dreams!

Anyways, visualizing reality checks might be considered VILD, Visually Incubated Lucid Dream, where you “Incubate” a thought into a dream. You visualize yourself reality checking, until the “Incubated” thought is in a dream!

Write down key elements, then try “replaying” the dream in your mind once you know the key elements to get to the details. Perturbation, it works great with dream recall, not so great with string theory. (Ignore that comment, it’s a physics joke)

There’s a list of things you can do to keep your lucid dream from fading, like rubbing your hands, spinning, and just touching objects in your dream. If you cannot move, just try to will yourself unfrozen!

And bad dream recall may cripple your quest a small bit, but if you follow tips on the forum, you needn’t worry about it.

Did I just summarize everything mattias said?
/me checks.