My Quest For Lucidity, My Custom DJ... Thoughts So Far?

Oak · February 17, 2012, 12:37pm

Greetings All, this is my first post after spending much time reading through guides on how to LD. Some great guides by the way, read and a very interesting one on programming the SC.

Overview: I had learned about LD years ago but a brief search really only produced payable courses and programs so I left it. I spoke to a friend about it the other day (can’t remember what sparked my curiosity again but hey) and he had read some books on the matter, told me to write a DJ and some stuff about frame of mind, so I then searched again and found some text which I read then found this place. That was 5 days ago.
Up till now I’ve not really remembered dreams that well (from sometimes nothing to maybe a couple of snippets, maybe that was just lack of effort thinking back) but since writing a basic DJ (I have been using the Dream Diary app on my iPhone) I have been remembering more, usually 2-4 scenes in varying detail. I had my first heightened awareness moment the nigh before last where I was in a helicopter (pilots seat) showing somebody how it worked and saw some text and noticed a change as I looked back and thought ‘hold on I don’t fly helicopters!’ but woke up, it was the last bit of the last scene. This morning I had 5 scenes but no lucidity. I had told my SC confidently to ‘become aware when I dream’ (btw I totally expect to LD and have no doubts that it is possible, as I was last night I’m sure tonight will be the night I get lucid), I now suspect I may have been better off telling my SC to ‘become lucid’ rather than ‘become aware’ as sure enough I was more aware with 5 scenes but still not lucid.
I have also been doing RC’s (my favourite 2 are levitation and passing my hand through a solid) and being more aware of where I am, my surroundings, how I got there, and if there is anything out of place. Also I am a technician in a Tech workshop so I often have some minor cuts and scrapes on my hands, I’m trying to make it second nature to check my hands and make sure a scrape is where it should be.

I have 2 questions really:

How am I doing, its a bit vague I know, but any feedback opinioning my methods and mindstate would be greatly appreciated.
How best to go about a DJ, I am a fairly busy person, working and most of my free time devoted to spending some time with my girlfriend and designing/making an invention, but I do make sure I have some time to myself whether it be listening to music (and designing, I can’t help it ) or watching a show, and recently… reading LD4all forums , I have been jotting entries in Dream Diary as a quick way of not forgetting (bad memory), but I can see if I carry on like this I will probably loose my entries as I tinker with my phone, or there will be so many ‘jots’ with no way of organising them I will loose interest in reviewing them which would knock my ability to spot dreamsigns.

This morning I’ve though of making a spreadsheet, by date with collumns for the dream, connections to other dreams and dreamsigns will will later be able to ‘find’ much easier. Has anyone else tried this method?

Thanks in advance for any feedback .

Edit: I have now made the spreadsheet DJ on excel, I have entered all the dreams I’ve had, and have it up to date, I have a feeling that it will do OK. For those interested I will describe the layout I opted for (2nd attempt, the 1st felt clunky and not flexible enough for new ideas.
Columns A, B, etc: Date, No~(e.g. 1/4 1 being the scene, 4 being total scenes that night), Dream Description, Keywords, Dreamsign, Lucidity (any level of awareness, any thoughts and emotions that made it slightly higher than an ND, until I get fully Lucid that is ), and now ‘Occurances IWL’, WILD Practice, Goals.

Rows are straightforward, each dream set gets a date, number, dream description, keywords etc (as much as I remember). For ease sake in knowing which columns I’m looking at I copy the ‘title bar’ so each day has its own title.

mattias · February 17, 2012, 9:42pm

Hi, Oak, and welcome to Ld4all

I must say I think you’re doing fine! Just a few things I’d like to say, personally. First of all, I’m sure joining the forum will help you a lot. Sharing and reading other people’s experiences and questions is a great way to learn what LD’ing is and how it works… and also that many things are different from person to person. Lucid dreaming is a very subjective experience, so sometimes things happen or don’t happen and you’ll never know why . You might find a technique that works very well for everyone and you just don’t get results. That doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong or that there’s something wrong with you, it just might not be the best approach for you. So I believe that the best way to learn how to LD is, after you’ve learned the basics, really pay attention to your experiences. Many people do specific steps to a method just because some guide says so, instead of “listening” to their body and trying to learn to work with your natural rhythm.

I say all this specially because you mentioned frame of mind, and I find that very important when learning to LD. One example, and I can speak from experience here, is that getting frustrated you are “failing” to lucid dream, will only make things worse (plus, you may not be getting a LD, but you may still be making progress, which isn’t a failure, right?). About the DJ, the more you record, the betteryour dream recall will get. But, on the other hand, if you suffer and see it as a chore instead of being able to have fun with it… that might become boring quickly and be a problem as well

Anyway, I hope my rambling was of some use I’m sure more people will add to what I’ve said. Oh, and some people get their first LD on the first night, others take a few weeks or months, so don’t lose faith, it will happen and it will be worth it!

Oak · February 18, 2012, 12:09am

Thanks for the reply. What you said about LD being subjective makes sense, I have read many different methods but there are some I think make more ‘sense’ (I’m a painfully logical/rational person), which (I hope) will put me in good stead for a quick transition to lucidity. As with what you said in 2nd paragraph about getting frustrated, I will hopefully (succesfully so far, but its only been a couple of days since I got my first sense of ‘something is out of place’) be able to control my emotions of frustration by being logical. being frustrated means less chance --> don’t be frustrated --> increases chance (I used to ask my mum what the point of being stressed was when she was, as she would take longer to do something if she was stressed than not, so why not stay stress free and find your task easier ).

Thanks again for your post, it’s definitely helped with assuring myself that I’m on the right track, which in turn in theory will help me gain lucidity quicker !