Eh… wow ? I’m shocked ! I gotta read this every day until it gets in my mind. I forget things easily. I’ll note this URL somewhere.
Thousand thanks for sharing such a deep but simple theory with us !
And BenDrummin58, feel happy for making so many other people happy 
!
Great stuff Ben, this and the thread from 2006 as well.
I realized that my mantras are bad so i will use one of yours (At (insert AM time here) tomorrow, I will realize I’m dreaming ) for a while and then i will see how it works.
Thanks Ben ! 
I just want to say that this is going to help me tremendously!!! Thank you soooo much!
~I AM a lucid dreamer!~
Thanks alot for posting this useful information.
I am a lucid dreamer!
excellent post ben…
very well put…
Actually it was direct psychology, because your subconsciousness does not understand negations.
When you say: “I do [color=red]NOT[/color] want to lucid dream.” it understands: “I [color=green]DO[/color] want to lucid dream.”
Alright i know, there is still the w-word in the sentence. So why had it worked?
Here i would like to introduce some new inputs to this thread:
-
Emotions are crucial!
As you made your statement with a good portion of emotion, it was burned into your subconscious memory with more efficiency. One can make use of this fact by visualising emotional situations while programming your mind.
eg.: Say: “I am a lucid dreamer!” and imagine a big crowd cheering at you. A hammer hitting your finger also works great, as you are programed to save painful memories for protection.
The emotion doesn’t really matter, it just has to be strong! -
There has been talk about future tense in this thread. Using present gives the visualisation some substance. OK, but take it to the next level!
Imagine yourself in the future thinking back at the great night full of LDs you had (that’s actually about to start).
This may work, as it creates an artificial irreversible memory in your mind. Your subconsciousness will accept it more likely as a fact because its past and there is nothing it can do about it.
I hope this helps. I am actually just about to become a dreamer, but have been using those techniques for a long time now. Quit smoking was a peace of cake
I am Dacardi and last night, after writing this post i had my first LD. It was absolutely great. I still get goosebumps when i think about it. Get it?
You know, I’ve heard this a million times and have yet to see a convincing study on it other than through various self-help and hypnotism websites. The thing that gets me is why would it not understand a negative. For instance, if I tell myself “I will not forget to pay my bills,” I still rememeber. I don’t train myself to forget. No, I really don’t buy that theory. But if someone can give me a good case study or the actual science behind it, then I’ll support it 100%.
I studied Hypnotherapy a few years ago and this was explained by the mind using its imagination to picture an event regardless of the negative in the sentence.
Part of the mind, we were told, experiences the event as real even if you are only imagining it which is why worrying can increase stress about something. Real experience is not distinguished from the imagined one as far as the emotional charge and stressful impact is concerned. By the way, I don’t necessarily put this theory out there as an advocate of it but simply because it’s sort of relevant.
That probably muddies the waters even further but it’s a fascinating thread nonetheless.
i tried this yesterday. for the last few months my dreams were sparse, bland, and with perhaps just a fragments of a scene, and last night i had at least 4 very vivid dreams full of colour and emotion. i even woke up after each dream voluntarily, just through saying
‘I AM a lucid dreamer’ (meaningfully).
i don’t know whether or not it is because its just that i want to lucid dream again after years of neglect, but i will stick with this and see where it leads, for me this is a huge step from virtually no dreaming to vivid just out of reach lucidity.
a big thanks for the topic!
Wow, thank you Ben! I never really thought about this. I think this works well with emotions, I was pretty miserable today until i realized… I AM happy!
This is so true, kinda reminds me of Buddha.
“He is able who thinks he is able”.
or
“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment”.
Great post Ben!
A friend of mine quit smoking by lying to himself. He’d tried and tried to quit before but hadn’t been able to for any length of time.
How did he lie to himself?
He simply said to himself “I am a non-smoker,” - every time he reached for and then smoked a cigarette. It’s important to note that he didn’t berate/beat himself up for having a cigarette. If he felt like having one he did so without judgement.
He did this for I don’t know how long until one day, he said, he just stopped smoking. His wife continued to smoke her head off but he became, and remained, the non-smoker he’d been telling himself that he was.
He was about 55 at the time and is 71 now.
So, now that you’ve jogged my memory about this, umm, let’s call it a ‘mind trick,’ I will start applying it toward lucid dreaming.
Thanks for the post.
JB
Thank you for the post, now I realize that it’s 100% true. Just two nights ago, I went to sleep thinking fervently that “the next time I will dream, I will know it.” And guess what happened that night? I had a dream, a non-lucid one, where I was getting ready for bed and kept saying to myself that “the next time I will dream, I will know it.”
The funny thing is, I woke up in the middle of the night, as I usually do. Logged the dream into my DJ, chuckled at the irony in it, and went back to sleep saying my will-do mantra. No surprise, that the second dream I had was pretty much the same as the first.
So from now on I firmly resolve to MILD only in the present.
I am Oleg and I am a dreamer, lucid and aware.
BEST
ARTICLE
EVER
I have been lurking ever since i stumbled upon this site so please forgive the 1st post. I remember on tv on the DR.Oz show that this guy was talking about when people walk, and they go to pass a hot girl or other people, the person walking is so worked up on trying not to walk wierd or stumble, that they just keep tellin themselves “please dont stumble, dont walk wierd” and he said ur brain sees it as you saying “stumble, walk wierd” so your chances of walking wierd or stumbling are increased (keyword- Increased)
lol Man I really got into lucid dreaming months ago, one time I had lucid dreams 3 nights in a row! anyway! lately I cant even remember my dreams, BUT when i did, I realized I was never lucid, BUT I did get back into a dream 3 times althought I may have been partially lucid I was just so amped up on trying to meet this one girl that when I was 50% sleep/awake, I kept trying to ignore Reality and focus on the dream and it snapped me back in.
ANYWAY! just by reading this I started writing I am hoping for the best
Great article. I am definitely going to implement your “subconscious programming” methods alongside other lucid dream inducing techniques and reality checks during my day. Your point about not saying that you want something but rather saying that you already can do something or already have something reminded me of something that I learned in college. What I learned in college is called “Goal Displacement” and it basically means that if you are in a class and your goal is to receive a A+ grade, you might not attain that goal and might even cause yourself to not get the A at all because of the stress and pressure you put on yourself and because of forces beyond your control that might screw you over or what not. Instead you should desire to learn, and by learning the subject well you will do well on tests and on homework assignments and will probably find yourself receiving the A+ easier than if you had only tried to get an A+. I always found it to be a cool theory. Anyways, great article and thanks for the lucid dreaming tips!
Dream Adventurously,
- Dreamscape Adventurer
The more i think about this article the more it makes sense. I used to hate myself because people made fun of me and i was gay and blah blah blah blah. I used to want to not hate myself so much, but it never happened until i started getting into the “i am” mindset that you talked about. I will try this when i go to sleep tonight.
sweet so i have every night been telling myself i WILL have a lucid dream, occasionally id write it down, the night i did it, i actually remembered my dream! so my dream recall improved for sure, after a couple days (today) I just had a lucid dream! it was so odd!!! ill post it up on a dream journal (via copy paste) hey how do i have it so i can be alerted if anyone replys to my post, or so i can have all the threads i posted on become listed?
Click on ‘‘view your posts’’ at the forum index.