As you all may or may not know, I joined these forums sometime last January, yet I had a huge dry spell and actually got back onto my DJ about 1-2 months ago. However, I kind of need some help.
No matter what, I want to lucid dream. 100%. I’m not lacking motivation at all; my problem isn’t even my DJ (that’s very successful, actually). My problem is time. You see, I literally have no time to do techniques. I have no time to do naps, absolutely no time for WBTB, and I’m just not very convincing with that gosh darned MILD technique. However, I’ve tried a ton of other techniques, and MILD is really the only one available to me.
So here I come to ask two things:
I’m terrible at being convincing; I will say my mantra a few times, and then get bored with it and accidentally start thinking about something else. How do I keep my other thoughts away, and keep repeating my mantra without forgetting it?
I’m also terrible at visualisation. No, really terrible. Plus, when do I visualize it? As I’m repeating my mantra, (while repeating it in my head) do I visualize the LD and then stop the visualization and start again (while still repeating the mantra)? Or, do I repeat my mantra long enough until I get tired, and then when I start to fall asleep, just visualize the dream?
To augment moogle’s statement, you only have to repeat your mantra until you feel you’ve said it enough. One of the important aspects of mantras and autosuggestion is to truly believe what you’re saying. If you’re getting bored with it… chances are you don’t fully believe it.
Also try not to be discouraged when techniques fail (though I can understand your being a bit distraught since you are on quite the dry spell). The trick is to keep working through it. The majority of my lucid dreams have come in the past two years. I’ve been DJing (on and off) since 2009. It was only after I got really serious and diligent about my DJing that I started seeing increases in LDing.
As to the time constraints… well that’s something each of us has to figure out on our own. Try your best to move things about, but remember you don’t have to focus on LDing 24 /7 (though you could if you were going for something like LL ) to actually have lucid dreams. I’d recommend trying to, every now and then, remind yourself that it could be a dream. RCs and RCILD are a great way to have LDs.
Sorry for the long post, but I hope something in there helps. If you have any other questions go ahead and ask.
[FA]Believe it or not, not one (or two, I forget) days after I made this post, I actually got a MILD! I still have to update my DJ for the past two weeks, but I recorded the LD down! Maybe the mantra does work…however, I’m slightly confused with the “waiting to fall asleep” thing. Do I repeat and visualize at the same time, repeat and then stop repeating and visualize, or repeat and visualize and then stop both and go to sleep?[/FA]
[FA]Quite the dry spell? This is my fifth! I’m really terrible at that…my problem is procrastination (I think). You see, like many, I want to have LDs. Reallll bad. However, I’ll wake up and be like, “Ugh, I don’t want to write my dream down” or “I’ll post it online later” and I just can’t bring myself to do those stinking RCs. It’s kind of hard to get into the habit when you know that you’re awake and never really question reality. I wanted to reply here ~2 days ago, but even getting myself to do this was a pain! I think I just need some motivation…
But, yeah, I’ll keep trying the MILD, try to fit some RCs in here or there, and force myself to post those dreams. Thanks for the posts, guys!
Until then,
-The Professor
P.S. This website, above every forums I have ever joined, is my absolute favourite. The community is amazing![/FA]
And I understand the procrastination bits… I used to have a lot of that in my system. You’ll have to find some sort of motivation for getting past that. As I mentioned I wasn’t always serious. For me, the motivation was a dream I had that spurred the desire to try to move beyond just “having” dreams and “making” dreams. I think you’ll have to find a good reason to push yourself to record your DJ.
(((NOTE: THE FOLLOWING MAY OR MAY NOT BE GOOD ADVICE.)))
There’s a way you can… eh… “circumvent” the writing your DJ down in the morning, and I’ve sort of gotten into it by accident. But it may or may not work. What I do is I write physical notes or record audio notes as well as go over the dream several times before getting out of bed. As you go through the day try to pull the dream memory back from time to time to keep it fresh.
Again, this might work for you… or it could just destroy your recall. Give it a shot if you feel up for it and are very stressed for time in the morning. But, as I said, it might not work like you want it to.
From my perspective you really do wanna have dreams but I think you are not giving it enough time in sense of the progress. I can understand that you don’t have time to do some techniques that require more time then techniques which are specifically made for the time when you already dream but what you can do is meditation.
And note that this is my own opinion, it may not apply to you it’s just something I would like to suggest. So because when you go through the process of meditation you learn a lot about letting yourself to sink into alternate state of the consciousness(the same as the dream is, well not the same but the same globally looking), you learn how to calm yourself, you learn how to stay in that state and the most beautiful part of it it doesn’t have to last longer that 10 minutes.
Doing meditation will teach you a lot about yourself and maybe most importantly a lot about your body and how connection between your mind and body works. Once when you get that, once when you feel comfortable being in your bed doing mantra and “waiting” to fall asleep the whole process will gave more results.
From my experience what Scipio Xaos suggested in his last post is a great way to remember your dreams and to stay connected to the idea of dreams through the day and then it will have more meaning again at the night.
When it comes to waiting for falling asleep and visualizing while falling asleep I think that meditation will help you in learning how to do that.
Experimentation is the key and meditation is the closest to the dreams and it’s something we can do through the day, we don’t need night for that and I know that you value your sleep as we all do but keep in mind that by having LD’s you will feel much better in the morning even if you slept half an hour less then you would normally and then again you can go to sleep half an hour earlier and you wouldn’t loose any sleep.