My attempts to be lucid

Quest for Lucidity
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My attempts with WILD.

I am not a lucid dreamer because its hard to get a LD even with suggestions before sleep. Nevertheless, I remember my dreams (many of them) everyday, since a long time.

I tried MILD without success but I must use it more times before I can say its worthless for me. Meanwhile, I am trying to use WILD.

The first time I used WILD was by the help of tibetan yoga ideas: while in the bed I visualised the tibetan “A”, very bright. After some time, I would get in a middle state, between sleep and awake, where strange things happened. These strange things, due to my hypnagogic state, were things like not knowing who I was, or being one with the dark (not “dark” in a bad sense, but in a literal meaning, since while asleep my eyes only see dark). Because of that I got somewhat scared,because my “I” is not used to such experiences, and I would wake up.

Latley, since the beggining of the year, I am trying to use WILD without success. Even MILD is not working. I just fall asleep.

Also, when I am dreaming I will not say “This is odd…I am dreaming!”…I just see things as normal. I mean, reality checks during the day wont work at night because my mind will think that anything is normal. Even worst, today I dreamt I was flying and I said “I am dreaming!” but in fact I was not lucid, that was just part of the dream itseld :confused:

Any hints about how to get lucid???

:sad:

Thanks a lot!

2

You could try the VILD (Visually Incubated Lucid Dream) by Peter Harrison which is found here [The BIG VILD Topic - Part I). I heard it worked on many people! I’m like you; I remember dreams easily but have difficulty using WILD. Hope this helps!

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Hi!

Thanks for that tip! Never read about VILD but I will read carefully the link provided. :wink:

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You could also work on WBTB if you have enough time to spare in the mornings. That is of course, if you haven’t done it yet.

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The most popular newbie advice I’ve heard is “use WBTB”. I’m new myself, but I’ve tried WBTB and it just didn’t work for me. It threw off my sleep schedule for days and made me miserable, and no lucidity whatsoever. That said, i’ve heard a lot of success stories about, so you might want to give it a shot! If that’s the case, take a gander.

I can’t claim to be massively experienced, but I can see how MILD isn’t for everyone. I’ve found it to be relatively successful, but then you might well differ. From what I’ve heard, it takes a lot of patience. If you want some extra assistance on it, try here and here. WILD, like you’ve been trying, also seems to vary; for example, I find WILD to be completely ineffective on me, because I simply don’t seem to experience HI in any form. However, some people drop into lucid dreams like no tomorrow with it, and I read somewhere that it’s the “holy grail” of lucid dreaming once you get hold of it. But that’s the rub: maybe I would get HI, but I’m not because I’m doing WILD wrong. The general consensus on WILD that I’ve heard is that it’s very difficult. For some pointers, look here and here.

My personal favourite technique is chaining (I think its formal name is DEILD). I like it because it’s very easy and doesn’t disturb sleep much, if at all. It also has (for me and the people I’ve talked to at least) a relatively high success rate! My sole lucid dream so far came from chaining, and I’ve had at least one since (and probably more), but IRL interruptions have kept me from remembering them properly. You can find a full guide on it here, and a nice thread on it here.

CALD is another technique, and I must confess that it seems very strange to me. However, it’s not my place to judge; I’ve been told that some people find it works very well! I also know next to nothing about it, so for better explanations look here and here. Another one of the more obscure techniques is FILD. I hardly know anything about this, except that it’s a variant on WILD. Might be worth checking out.

The problem with recommending for this kind of thing is that it’s so massively different for everyone. I like MILD+chaining, but Bobby B down the road can’t stand MILD and is a WILD addict who experiments with CALD. All in all, an awful lot of the learning process is just trying out different techniques until you find one that works for you. Give 'em a shot, and sweet dreams!

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jioraxog, lots of useful information on your post! Thanks a lot!

I am already carefully reading some of them, specially the VILD.

Also, regarding my problem:

  • since child I have trouble sleeping: I take at least 30 minutes to fall asleep, I think I dont get enough deep sleep, I wake up many times during the night and I may take 10 minutes to fall asleep again and I am tired during the day…this is a burden that, alone, can stop me from LD;
  • because of that, sometimes I get bored with WILD because I must wait until I get tired and when that happens is without warning lol, and I fall asleep…Om fact thats a problem that will affect any technique I suppose;
  • because I take too long to fall asleep, some techniques are even harder than WILD, like WBTB, specially when every minute counts and your sleep is precious (otherwise I will be even more tired during a work day);
  • even so, sometimes - and only sometimes - during weekend early mornings I will notice that if I wake up my mind (not necessarly getting out of bed) for 10 minutes, I may fall asleep very fast after that I have a LD;
  • Altought I have a good working memory, my prospective memory is horrible! maybe due to stress, I dont know, last few years I never remember to do something. I must write that on a small paper (agenda, etc) or I will forget to do that action (sometimes I even forget to use the agenda lol).
  • I have a small child, a beautiful baby, but during the night he wakes uo a few times (for milk, etc), and my mind is even more tired for LD :happy:
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First of all I’m admiring you and anyone else that is really persistent with LD in situation like your - child, work, tones of other things, etc etc etc. In western civilization we are not thought to value our dreams. All we are thought to be focused on is school, job, family, bills and death.

Well, back to the topic. I would usually suggest to use this wakings for WBTB or DEILD as suggested in posts above but as you need more time to fall asleep I guess that’s not too much of a great idea. What you can do is stay awake only few seconds - minutes.

Your choice of using WILD I would say is great. That’s what you need and that’s what is perfect for you. All those wakings you can use in your advantage and your child could help you specially if the child is waking most of the nights around the same time. (I’ve heard that some children do that, they say that they are like a clock so…) You’re sleep cycles could theoretically adjust to that.

So what you can do once you are already awake to actually fall asleep and dream? To comment that you can give us more information on what you do. If you are more of a desk and office type of a guy then just going for a nice longer run few hours before bed time might do just the effect you need. When I didn’t had a job I was having a lot of physical energy and that would cause my sleep to be very light. I would hear everything, when I would wake up some time was needed to fall asleep again. Then I started running. My mind was clear but the body was tired for the change and that’s what kept me asleep.

I would still wake up around 4am as I made a habit but the body was striving for sleep.

On weekends we sleep in, we get more sleep and that means longer REM periods. That’s why it’s important to get as much sleep as possible. I suppose it’s hard with a child but still when you cut here and there TV, computer, tablet and such modern gadgets you could get more time which might reflect on your sleep.

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Thanks for the complete answer :wink:

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Since I decided to learn LD, I am doing less exercises than I tought because when I try to LD, my sleep will be worst (I dont know why).

I also notice that I am getting sleep paralysis, something that I didnt have for a long long time. But I cant also take advantage from it. For example, today I was paralysed and I tought “Good! This is a good state for LD”, but then I just got something like a “paralysed dream” lol: I saw an image and I was stuck there. No dream at all, just an image of sand.

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I remember this one dream where the actual dream was about having a lucid dream, i was sooooo annoyed when I woke up.

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It not that uncommon. It’s a change in your life and you can’t expect to not experience change in your nightly routine(sleep, awakening, dream recall etc.)

All you have to do now is be persistent. If you menage to go through that point in your LD quest then this will become much easier and in the process, trust me, you will learn a lot. It might not seem as something special about the experiences you are having now, maybe just from this experiences later on you will learn useful information about yourself because that’s the big part of becoming lucid as in WL also in dreams - knowing yourself.

Good luck! :content:

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Thanks for the answer :smile:

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You’re welcome! :content: