Okay, so, this is my first post on this forum. So, since I am not at all a forum guy and this one of my first topics on this website, I’m just going to try to explain why I want to do LD, how I tried to do it, and hope to find why it doesn’t work with your answers (btw, thanks for that in advance )
So, I learned about lucid dreams about 4 or 5 years ago, but I really tried to practice it 1 year ago. Since then I’ve only done 4 or 5 LDs wich is already fine, I mean, at least, I know this is real, wich is something my parents have some troubles to believe. I tried since one year, I had some periods were I watched some advice videos and learns about techniques, reality checks, dream journals, etc… But for me, it rarely works. I got some periods where I was dedicating myself to LD, some where I was passively practicing, and some others where I completely gave up and did nothing LD related. And, as I stated, I only did 4 LD or so during the year, none of them where vivid or lasted a long time (the latest, I believe is normal for a beginner like me). During my summer, at the start of June, I tried to practice LD with hope that I will have at least one during my vacation, wich ends in the start of October. I was more invested than before, I questionned some friends about it (even if they are pretty inexperimented, but they still know the subject like me), I bought a book about it, I listened to binaural beats before sleep, trying to practice, to regularly to reality checks, etc… Results : 0. I didn’t have a single LD during my vacation. The last one I made was in February. So now, after 3 month, I decided to take a break, and it’s about to end when I decided to talk about it to peoples online, and I ended today on this website.
Okay, so next, I’m gonna talk about what I was doing to become lucid. First, dream journal, wich everyone says it’s the most important thing to do LD. And so I did by downloading an app on my phone called “Lucidity”, wich allow me to write down every dreams I made. It works so far, but I wasn’t a big dreamer in the first place. I was able to quicly solve that problem by performing some Mnemonic induction, just saying to myself before going to sleep “I will remember my dreams tomorrow”, and it worked. So, next step to me was to become lucid. I never remember my reality check counts during the day, but I know it’s pretty inconsistent and that I don’t think to do it when I’m invested in something. And then, there is reality checks, the first thing that comes in mind is WBTB, it’s probably an important factor because many says it is, but I hate this technique, I feel like every time I do it, I just ruin my slumber and my awakening at the morning (and worst of all, even if I tried to stay awake and do a technique, IT NEVER WORKED). Every time I do it, I’m just extremely tired and just want to go back to sleep, and it’s also the case the morning, so I bypass it.
I tried other techniques before I sleep, and this is where troubles begins. I’ve already tried WILD, FILD, and even MILD to some extend, every time I’ve gone to sleep during my busy training, but again, it never worked. I think I have an idea to why that, I have the impression I must be totally relaxed and not think about anything to sleep, while the latest is required to do the technique. Idk but every time I do the technique, it is impossible for me to sleep, even worse, it excites me more than anything and after that, it becomes a pain to get down to sleep even if I don’t think of anything. I think this is the part where I need the most help. If there is a solution to help me relax and sleep with the thought provoqued by the technique, it would be awesome for me. Although, I remember having an awaken dream (don’t know if it is said like than, in french, we say “rêve éveillé”) in wich I imagined a world with specific characters before I slept, and I manages, idk how, to get myself in this world while falling asleep. Maybe it can be a clue?
The next thing I want to talk is what do my dreams look like. Trying to discern your dream signs is supposedly really important, the thing is… Idk, when I read my dream journal, I don’t find any. All of my dreams are pretty randoms, with differents characters, worlds, scenery, ambiance, themes, etc… There are some times where videogames appear in the story, even if its in some kind of medieval environment, but It’s like every 10 dreams or so… and worst of all, all of my dreams are very reality based and it’s harder to me to discern the difference with real life (and even if there is major difference, I can’t discern it) and even when it’s fantasy (which arrived often lately), I’m unable to do it. Hey, there is sometimes, when i don’t incarn myself, I am just some random movie, book or game character (one thing I’m pretty sure about this statement, is that I never became lucid when I was someone other than myself). Sometimes, I’m at first person or third person (also never got a LD while in third person), sometimes, it cut to other characters like a movie… And it’s never the same.
But I think what bother me the most about my dreams (and I think it is one of the reason I don’t do lucid dreams) is that they are almost never really vivid. Wich is a shame, because I feel like if I can’t control my dreams, I can’t at least live them to the max, being super invested in… But instead, I feel like I’m only watching a movie without any emotion whatsoever. Lastly (and frankly other time, but I got this a lot this times), I was able to feel emotions during my dreams, like some stress during an escape sequence or something, but nothing more than that, I almost feel never IN the dream, I feel like I’m in spectator mode, even if I feel, and this bother me.
Now that I talked about my regular dreams, I’ll talk about what my few lucid dreams looked like. First, they were never vivid and didn’t lasted very long (wich I think is normal). One of them was so blurry, that what I wrote in my journal was extremely vague and I didn’t even remember I did a dream like that. I’m still happy I was able to change something in some of them, one time, it was just some cosmetic I wore, another time, it was the whole scenery (I remember, I didn’t know that much about Lucid dreaming and I wanted to create a whole world from scratch, so I wanted everything to be just black, I blinked, it happened, I found it too scary, and I wanted everything in black, I blinked, it happened again, the rest is a blur). But something I noticed when talking to my few LD to a friends. He said that my subconscious really doesn’t like when I do LD, he said that because he noticed that in most of my LC, I was being chased by some dream character. And since they are somewhat the manifestation of my subconscious, I said to myself, maybe it’s true, it doesn’t want me to do lucid dream, but… Why?
I think I will finish by explain why I want to become lucid in the first place, so I will just copy-paste the things I already said in the presentation topic :
First, I want to communicate with my subconscious, I heard it can be very therapeutic and I want to help myself change some bit of my personality I find imperfect.
Second, I want to become the character I create. I create a lot of OCs with some kind of powers that are really close to me, I could even say they are me. I incorporate them into stories I write, but I think that my vision of them is “incomplete” because I don’t know what I feel when using the powers my OCs have (which is normal, because it’s real life dammit). And I feel like I must really put myself in their place to really know what they can feel like when I put them in different situation. Also, I just want to have fun with my powers, so why not?
And thirdly, I just want to let my imagination run wild with environments and situations. I’ve heard that lucid dream can boost your imagination and I totally want to do that, explore environment or species I’ve never thougt they existed, travel through a lot of locations with my (imaginary) friends. And then, when I wake up, get something out of it, new sights to exploit and have a story to tell to my (irl) friends.
If you read this whole thing, then be my guest. Sorry if my english is bad, I’m french
This is my current journey to lucid dream, I will be pleased if you tried to give me tips to become lucid, because I feel like it could be a really big thing that could improve my life on so many ways, and I don’t want to miss it, if I do become professional one day, maybe I’ll share my experiences on this forum . Thanks for reading me and double thanks if you comments back, I’ll be very content.