MILD in March 2021 Challenge: Who's with me?

Quest for Lucidity
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Dear MILD in Marchers,

I’m thrilled to report that, for the first time in my life, I had not 1 but 3 lucid dreams last night - including a WILD and an intentional transformation into a mouse! This came after a fruitless week of trying.

I learned a great deal from the experience, and since I know some of you are struggling with getting lucid, I thought I would share what I’ve learned, in case it can be helpful to even one reader.

  1. MILD does work! Try using Stephen Laberge’s instructions to the letter, NOT the watered-down versions you’ll find online. I won’t restate his principles but I strongly suggest you find them (just do a Google search) and try following that. There are so many versions of MILD on YouTube, self-help websites, etc. They may be well-intentioned, but Laberge is a serious researcher and his instructions are proven to work. They’re the real deal.

  2. WILD isn’t complicated or hard at all. I was just doing it wrong! I think I psyched myself out by reading up too much about it. WILD is simple. You need to:

a) keep a healthy, regular sleep schedule if you can (for most people, 8 full hours consistently - the same hours). On the nights where I’m too tired, or go to bed too late, or don’t feel tired enough, lucid does NOT happen at all.

b) be extremely close to REM already (so, try WBTB + a relaxation technique like 61-point, or just go back to sleep immediately with MILD after waking yourself during REM). “Relaxation” doesn’t come close to describing how close to sleep you need to be! If you’re too awake, it won’t work. You need to be GROGGY tired. Much closer to sleep than waking life.

c) I never understood instructions like “keep a thread of consciousness as you go to sleep.” What is a thread? How do you do that? I am still mystified, after so many attempts. Here’s what I found actually works: it isn’t your consciousness that stays awake as you fall asleep. It isn’t body asleep, mind awake. Not exactly. It’s your WILL to be lucid. It’s your intent. That’s the part that stays intact as you go off to sleep! That willpower will enable you to go directly into a lucid dream. If you’re doing MILD properly, you are visualizing yourself becoming lucid already. Now, as you do so, try to engage your senses! Literally pull yourself into the dream, using your sense of touch, for example. Engage with and touch things in your visualization as you repeat your mantra of wanting to be lucid (use Laberge’s exact words). If you are TRULY GROGGY-TIRED, then (if you’re like me) this will absolutely work.

Last night, in this state, I simply waved my arm in front of me. To my amazement, it was a pale, bare, shimmering dream arm. I was completely lucid and went on to explore and talk to dream figures.

  1. I don’t want to make all this sound too easy, because I have been working very hard on becoming lucid (with reality checks, journaling and all the rest) for some time now. You do have to put in the work. However, if you do so, AND do the “right” technique (or the one that works for you), you WILL be rewarded with lucid dreams!

Happy dreams and let’s keep posting throughout MILD in March! I learn so much from reading all of your posts.

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that’s really cool you were able to have three lucid dreams! WILDing was always my preferred method as a teenager and hopefully you will have continued success with your dream awareness ^^

(I still am interested in the challenge although im not sure how well I will do given my situation with the meds, since i keep coming across cues in my dreams which should by all accounts trigger lucidity, but aren’t working.)

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That’s awesome, three LDs in one night is a really cool and impressive feat! I hope you can continue to be so successful throughout March and beyond.

I’m curious what the dreams were like and what you were doing in them. I would love to read more about them.
And what are your plans for future LDs?

I’ve also continued with MILD and the occasional WBTB. But sleep hasn’t been good enough for normal dream recall even so I should fix that first :smile:

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Yeah I totally agree. I’ve found there’s no point even trying LDs if your sleep is out of whack. You have to figure that out first.

1st dream: I was at a Walmart checking out a neat treasure chest underneath a table (lol). I was able to read the first two words fine (pretty sure they were “frequency” and “atlas”) but the third was garbled. I realized I had to be dreaming and started laughing. It was really funny!

After walking around randomly, I segued into

2nd dream (lucid upon entry): My mom was in a small closet in our old house. There was this neat dim golden lighting and I wanted to go see her and say hi. But in between us was a wall. I could only see her through a small cat-sized trapdoor! I thought to myself, oh, I know what to do, I can just turn into a mouse since other people have said they’re able to do that in lucid dreams. I tried saying “I’m now a mouse” with authority, to no avail. It was ridiculous. But then I tried turning around, deciding I wanted to be a mouse when I turned again to face the wall; closed my eyes, and turned around again. Thankfully, I didn’t wake up. I was a mouse and went through the trapdoor fine. My mom was wearing a blue bathrobe and we chatted for a while. Not much was happening, to be honest! I got a little bored and decided to check on my physical body to see if I was still wearing my sleep mask. I tried waking into my body and checked that the mask was on, all right. (In retrospect this was a false awakening, because I was wearing a different mask last night, haha!).

Segue to…

3rd dream (much longer). I was in a music studio, with an old friend behind the glass at the controls. I went around back and said hi. He was out of it / non responsive. I noticed there was a door next to me so I took it and went up the stairs. At the top was a landing. When I opened that door, I saw a bunch of old professors waiting for someone to hand them their course notes. This was definitely the college where I teach in real life, but that room doesn’t exist in real life. I sort of said hi but they were non responsive, too. I went back to the studio and since my friend wasn’t very responsive, I thought it would be neat to get up close and really inspect the character. It turns out he was wearing lipstick and was more of a she. (Incredibly vivid.)

At this point, my 4-year-old woke me up in real life, and after that, it was too late to hope to fall back asleep.

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After 2 False LDs and several slip ups, I did manage a MILD the other night!

I was kicking myself so hard because MILD is my favorite method and it’s MILD March for goodness sake I was almost embarrassed that I hadn’t got one yet bahaha
I had several near CALDs but my DCs (masquerading as others that I only recognized upon waking) wouldn’t come out and say it because if they did it would have been a CALD, and we couldn’t have that in MILD March, apparently :rofl:

Hope everyone else’s practice is going well!
MILD can take a little time to get set in, I bet everyone will suddenly get a ton of MILDs in April.

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I did it! My first successful MILD of March! It took me a while to achieve one, but I ended up with two very clear LDs in one night. I’m glad I didn’t give up! I’ll link my Dream Journal below.
https://community.ld4all.com/t/asterias-dream-journal-part-1/75148/73?u=i_am_asteria

I loved reading about all the successes in this topic, and I also learnt so much from reading them too. Keep posting, you’re all doing so well :heart:.

I have a feeling that this will be very very true :joy: :joy:

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I actually had a MILD this morning! I feel a bit more encouraged now ^^

https://community.ld4all.com/t/nexuss-dream-journal-nuve-arkt/76218/35?u=thenexus

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Wow @TheNexus! So surreal, detailed and beautifully described! Did you WBTB?

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thanks! I didn’t use the WBTB technique exactly, it was more of a brief awakening before falling back asleep for another few hours, but im wondering if that would work for me if I officially tried it :thinking:

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In a book I’m currently reading by Charlie Morley, he cites something like 2,000% more lucid dreams if you use WBTB. It’s definitely worth trying out! (By the way, his book, dealing with Dream Yoga, is absolutely riveting.)

I’ve had a dry spell since my triple-decker LD - I can’t even remember my dreams! I think I psyched myself out somehow. : (

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ill definitely try that out, then! i tend to have many more dreams in the morning anyways, so that might just work ^^

Lucid dreaming tends to be a bit sporadic i’ve found, like i had a recent dry spell myself. I’m sure soon you’ll be back on track and find more success with your LDs :slight_smile:

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I forgot to post here, but I had an LD yesterday and today that were kinda like MILDs… well… at least… the autosuggestion to be lucid worked… not so much with my dream goals, though. :stuck_out_tongue:

You can read them here and here.

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So I’ve been crazy busy but I had a LD 5 nights ago. As usual, I did MILD and inspected at my hands in a dream, and realized I was dreaming (my pinky was like a foot long).

The dream itself was nothing very special - just walking back to my dream apartment with my wife. I mentioned it was a dream but she didn’t really care, haha.

I woke up in the early hours and then went back to bed. That’s when things got crazy. I had a chain of very powerful, archetypal dreams that I would characterize as being semi-lucid. I knew in the back of my mind it was a dream but went along with it and the dream was just unbelievably luminescent and vivid.

I was on a crazy ice ship, because a production company was shooting a documentary and needed someone (me of course) to go live in the little tower at the top of the ship (like 10 stories high) to relive the experience of a little-known ice shipper who lived alone in the crazy tower. The view from the window was impossibly clear: a huge sky, open sea, blue-gray horizon as far as the eye can see, just so huge and wide and unwritten / full of possibility.

Somehow, the iceshipper was me, and vice-versa. It was more than reliving and retelling; I was stepping back into someone I once knew, or was, somehow. Past life??

The little tower had a big mechanical colander. As we plowed through the ice, the machine would chop up wood for firewood to power the ship. I sat in a revolving chair in front of the massive window, with the wood chipper behind me. As the ship moved forward, I swerved around crazily and the firewood was born in the machine behind me.

Walking down from the tower, I discussed with actor Michael Caine, who was making the documentary. We stopped on a landing and he opened a “book of life.”

I don’t remember the details but essentially, this dream was about unwritten possibility, and how what lies ahead is one with what is already done and past.

This LD happened the same way all my LD happen. Basically, I had gotten a good night of sleep the previous night, and I did all the right practices (journaling, RCs, meditating 2x a day, winding down in the evening, etc.).

You definitely have to be consistent to get the results.

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Last night I had a dream where I was discussing LDs with somebody, almost certainly on LD4all. And then I contemplated on my MILD mantra and recited it. Inside my dream :lol: Go, MILD in March

Maaaybe I even became lucid in that dream but it was super early in the night and I’m feeling lucky I can still recall anything after sleeping through the night completely uninterrupted.

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Haha that’s funny @Marvin, and a great wrap-up for Mild in March! The end is merely the beginning…

I had a LD a couple nights ago but didn’t bother to report it because it was so laughable. I was shopping at the pharmacy with a small cart, and wondering, why the hell am I wearing my bathrobe at the pharmacy?! Sure enough it was a dream. Unfortunately like with Marvin this was early in the night and didn’t last. I do remember though that I couldn’t sleep so I walked downstairs in my house… But I randomly did a RC, and realized I was dreaming! So another mini LD right there.

Not exactly earth shattering experiences, but they do point to a useful tip: if you want easy lucid dreams, get in the habit of weird-induced LDs by simply asking yourself when you’re awake, anytime something weird happens, “Could this be a dream?” It’s a super easy hack for at least a couple LDs per month.

: )

Unrelated topic: what do you all think about using supplements? Legit, or unmindful?

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Is March shorter by a day where you are living? Still at least 1 more night to go. But like you said, it’s only the beginning anyway! I’ll try to stick to MILD whenever I have the opportunity. Unfortunately that has become quite rare mid March and will continue like this for most of the upcoming months. So I’ll need to figure out how to adapt my sleeping habits to accommodate.

Concerning supplements, the most recent discussion can be found here:
https://community.ld4all.com/t/do-supplements-really-work-for-lucid-dreaming/75823

I’ve never used any and prefer not to try. Most of the actually useful stuff is likely illegal here anyway except for strictly medical purposes.

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On the last possible chance to still count for March, I had a weak or even false lucid dream last night. It must have been the first dream of the night, it feels so distant and hazy. Basically the only thing I remember is that I used lucid powers and knew that I could because I was inside a dream. Even even feels a bit like FM from inside a dream. Can’t even write anything useful down in my online DJ :joy:

And this concludes MILD in March for me. I’ll definitely keep MILDing!

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Continuing the discussion from MILD in March 2021 Challenge: Who's with me?:

Great dream. Do you have any background of ships or shipping in your past?
K

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I actually love when this happens because then I have the opportunity to remember details of the dreams better through repetition! This is something I actually aim to do bc I want to be able to remember the art and music that comes up in dreams better, since it is always so fresh!

I called it “layering” because you’re layering on the memory of the information Dream after dream, like a cosmic neural cake :grin: kind of inception -esque lol

It doesn’t necessarily need to be during an FA either, it could also be just a normal dream, then repeating or relaying the information to yourself or a DC in the next dream, etc etc.

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Yes that’s definitely true. Just this morning I had a dream in which I told a DC (colleague of mine) during some small talk about the dreams I had had earlier that night and to some degree even from the previous nights as if I was telling her about my weekend.

What I noticed though is that those dreams tend to inject a lot of new information especially in the form of FM. So for me it’s not always just about intensifying existing memory but also largely extending them. It can get really muddled. But if broad content is just what you want, then there’s nothing wrong with that.

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