Nothing works

Quest for Lucidity
1

Splitted from the BIG MILD topic cause the questions were concerning all the techniques and not only MILD. Moreover, I deleted a similar message with the same questions, though less detailled, which was posted in the “How to choose your technique?” topic. Please don’t post the same questions in different threads.

Ok, Ive had enough of arguing to myself what the hell MILD is, ive read the topic, the old topic, the info on the site, and it STILL doesn’t make sense.

From my knoledge, I tired MILD, and it failed so miserably that I consider it to be impossible to do and that I can NEVER do it. I try WILD with no success, but I atleast understand how it works and that it’s possible.

Ive been trying for a LONG time now, with a single 30 second success (randomely)and am growing tired of this! I want my LDs, like people describe! The guide says I SHOULD do MILD, but MILD is impossible. I can’t do RCs, I never have in a dream, and I can NOT do them unless Im thining about LDs. It only happens when I come to this site, and perhaps maybe 1-2 times a week when Im not on this site about to go to bed.

MILD is suposedly the easiest, yet It never worlks (nor makes much sense) for me. The way I see it is "do RCs often, think about dreaming before you go to bed, then get an LD in your dreams by doing a RC in said dream. SOME people though say you wake up before havign your dream, which make ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE! That would be WBTB, which is also stupid because I can’t do it either.

WILD before going to sleep is my only option, and that one is the hardest suposedly. Im motivated, I want a LD so badly I would do ANYTHING for one, yet, I can’t get them. I am tired of this! I will never give up, but I probably won’t ever get a LD again, because it would be JUST perfect to have felt a TINY bit of what it would be like and to never have it again, EVER.

I know im being negative about this, but what happen when I lie to myself positevely, NOTHING. MILD doesn’t work, VILD doesn’t work, WILD doesn’t work, DILD doesn’t work, WBTB doesn’t work, Theres ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LEFT TO TRY!!!

I just want to have LDs but noooooooo…

2

Doing RC s is a separate induction method.

When you do MILD you’re trying to remember to realize you’re dreaming at a later time: when you are dreaming. Just like when you go to a shop you try to remember to buy milk, and sometimes you forget. This is prospective memory because it’s trying to remember something in the future. Retrospective would be the opposite.

You want to wake up from a dream first and then think about dreaming; not before you go to bed. ‘Think about dreaming’ means you playback the dream you awoke from in your mind, you find a dreamsign in it, you imagine yourself realizing it is a dreamsign and therefore a dream, you imagine yourself becoming lucid, you imagine yourself doing whatever it is you wanted to do in your lucid dream. Meanwhile, you say in your mind something like, ‘The next time I’m dreaming, I want to remember to realize I’m dreaming.’. Just like you would say to yourself, ‘The next time I’m in the shop, I want to remember to buy some milk.’. Repeat all this for as long as you want.

When MILD works, it’s generally not because you do an RC in your dream but because you just ‘realize you’re dreaming’.

You’re right, waking up before having a dream doesn’t make sense.

Why can’t you do WBTB??! It’s simple, you wake up…and then go back to bed!:wink: (It’s not technically a LD induction method, it’s more of an aid)

I recommend concentrating on just one technique for awhile and sincerely put effort into doing it.

Believe! :cool:

Does that make any sense?

3

Believe.

4

I guess it makes sense now… Suposedly since my memory often works like that and that my dreams often involve something videogame related, AND I play videogames a lot, MILD should be very easy… but I’d still have to make myself remember about LDs WHILE im playing (tried with RCs, failed…).

I really don’t know why I can’t do WBTB… Ive tried countless times to try and do it but failed each time miserably… I either can’t get back to sleep, sleep through my alarm, or fall back to sleep right after before I can think about anything…

I do believe, but the more you fail the harder it gets…

5

What doesn’t make sense? And where do you read this? MILD has nothing to do with RC’ing. MILD is:

  • before you fall asleep, or after a WBTB, remember your last dream.
  • while remembering your last dream, notice when strange things or dreamsigns could have make you lucid.
  • when you remember your dream and notice such a sign, imagine it could have make you lucid them imagine that you do what you planned to do in a LD.
  • after having done this, repeat mentally, for instance 20 times, a sentence like “In my next dream, I’ll realize that I’m dreaming”.

MILD is based upon autosugestion. If you autosuggest you that it won’t work, it won’t.

It’s not necessary to have RC’s in dreams. When you practice RC’s in real life, it can make you lucid without a clear reason why in dreams.

Everybody can do RC’s. Just make an effort. You have to do them at least 5 times in a day.

Who said that? Of course it makes no sense. And by the way in what could this be useful in order to have LD’s?

Why is WBTB stupid? Why would it be impossible to wake up with an alarm?

It seems that you are making impossible all the easiest ways of having an LD, just in order to make it the more difficult you can. Don’t complain then if you don’t have LD’s.

You are only negative and you lie to yourself negatively. I’m sorry to be so harsh but it’s the only way to make you realize why you don’t have LD’s.

6

That starter was a rant I made after finaly posting about my hate toward not knowing what the hell MILD really was while I was quite tired. Did you even read my second post?

The most RCs Ive ever done in a day is maybe 3… I simply can’t remember to do them…

GAH! I hate this “autosuggestion” stuff, It’s never worked for me before…

WILD is the only one I can really try because RCs don’t work for me and I stated why WBTB won’t work for me already.

I would gladly take an easier way of getting LDs if it were possible. Now that I actually know what MILD really is, I can actually try it, but I don’t like the autosugestion part of it…

I may seem negative but I never give up unless absolutely nessesary, and there will never be a reason to stop trying to LD at will, and get THE perfect LD. I want one too badly to quit, How is that not positive. All people have been saying lately is that Im a doubter but everyone has doubt no matter what,and I DO believe I can get LDs, it CAN’T be the reason.

7

Ledgem, from reading this post and others… I believe that you are frustrated, confused, and pissed off. LD’s are not east, if they were everybody would be doing it. WIth any hard skill, it takes motivation, intention, and pacients. I know you want a lucid dream tonight, but something you must realize is that you have YEARS of life and every night you will have the opportunity to have a lucid dream. The skill is going to take a long time to learn, no doubt about it. If you really want to have LDs, I’d recommend that you take a break or slow down, getting frustrated will just eventually lead you to quiting. Have a dream journal that you write in every night, everything you can remember. This will get you familiar with the dream world and also get you intrested in your dreams. Then, once your in a cycle practice WBTB with MILD. Merely suggest in your mantra that you will have a lucid dream and realize your dreaming. Wake up 5 hours after going to sleep, stay up for 30 mins writing in journal and looking up stuff on dreams. Then go back to bed and do the MILD technique. Get in a cycle, and slowly you will improve and eventually start having LDs.

Just calm down and let the lucid dream come to you. Dont try to force yourself to come to it.

8

On the contrary, I think it works very well for you yet in a negative way. You’re repeating all the time: “Nothing works, it never worked for me, I hate this, I can’t do this”. Isn’t this autosuggestion? And didn’t you ever use autosuggestion in order to remember dreams? It’s a generally a good way in order to realize autosuggestion works. Now, when it comes to induce LD’s, it works slower than for recalling dreams.

I often try to refrain beginners to use WILD. When they come on the forum, they see lots of threads about WILD, everybody talks about it (perhaps because they can’t do it). They believe that they can have a LD quite immediatly with this method cause, in their mind, you just go to sleep then you have a LD. If it was so simple, everybody would be a great meditationer and tibetan monks could go and get lost in their mountains.

That’s the reason why I made two polls in order to know if WILD was so simple. It seems that just one person on two can WILD. Then I made polls in order to know if WILD were common. They weren’t. Later, I found that statistics have been already done. Just about one LD on 5 is a WILD. As for me, I just have one WILD on more than 100 LD’s and it was with the dream reentry technique.

Now it seems that WILD is very easy for some people. They reach the hypnagogic state quite immediatly, they have immediatly HH. Pr Paul Tholey noticed that too and he adviced WILD only to people who can sleep quickly and have often natural HH. I suspect this to be due to some neurotransmitters in brain: for instance, many good WILD’ers have natural SP too.
I don’t like that beginners without such a gift try WILD cause it just puts them off LD’ing. It’s rather common and you can see every month on the forum one discouraged people saying: “you are all liers, it doesn’t work, you are crazy, etc.”

IMO, you shouldn’t really take a break, but take your time in order to analyze the technique you used, how you used them and why they didn’t give you LD’s. You said you envy people. I don’t think it’s a good state of mind and it may even create a psychological block. By the way, great LD’s are very rare. Most of them last about 30 seconds. Their average duration is about 2 minutes. It’s very rare when you can have a 15 minutes one, do great things or enjoy beautiful landscapes. Thus you need to go through many little uninteresting LD’s in the hope to have a big interesting one. As for me, I find it’s worthy nevertheless. Now it’s like golf: you have to spend a lot of time in boring and repetitive exercices in order to make one beautiful drive every month. Thus there is no need to hurry.

The first time I heard about LD’ing, it was about WILD. I tried yet without a success. I thought it was bullshit. Many and many years later, I found the “find your hands” technique. I tried again and about one month later, I had my first LD. But I had not that many LD’s with this technique, perhaps two or three a year. You can imagine that I wasn’t practising a lot, cause I wasn’t really encouraged by so few results. Many years later again, I found the DJ of a good LD’er on her website. I decide to give another try. I search for more information, I found the forum and other websites related to LD’ing. I read them all, I learnt the different techniques, I tried to understand how they worked, I found some of them useful and some of them ridiculous. From all this information, I made my own mixed method and I manage to have about 7 LD’s a month during a year. I think you are lucky to find all this information nowadays. With internet, you can access it very easily. It was impossible just few years before.

What you should do is reading the most information you can about LD’ing methods (wikibook, Lucidity Institute and other websites). When you don’t understand something, you ask on the forum. You gather information and “digest” it. Try to find great LD’ers DJ’s, Paul Tholey articles, Laberge’s articles, etc. and read them. Try to find information about autosuggestion (or autohypnosis, it’s the same thing). Don’t rely on commercial website, they most often don’t give good information and just want to buy their stuff. Personnal or scientific websites are better. Autosuggestion is something simple you can do yourself without any external aid. Try to find useful tips on the main LD’ing methods. For instance, about RC’s, some people stick reminders or they even write “RC” on their hands. You can perhaps try to ask discreet questions about LD’ing amongst your friends (if they aren’t interested in their dreams, it’s not worthy, they’ll just think you’re crazy. :happy: Just wait until one of them touch the subject on). Perhaps one of the people you know is a LD’er. It’s easier to practice LD’ing with another person cause it creates an emulation. Now this last point is perhaps not the best advice I gave you, especially if your friends are more interested in football. But one day you’ll perhaps meet somebody who is interested in LD’ing.

Anyways, gather information, sort it and find what is likely to work the best with you.

And take all your time. Lucid dreams won’t fly away. :wink:

9

Good advice.

Are you sure you’re talking about LD’s here? :wink:

10

My LD’s average duration is 2 minutes. My longest LD’s lasted 30 minutes. Just 5% lasted more than 10 minutes. I saw quite the same thing recently on the Lucidity Institure website: average duration=2 mn, longest=50mn. In the numerous “How long LD’s last?” topics, people say quite the same. Why did you ask this? Are all your LD’s very long or very short? :eek:

11

I thought you’d get it, obviously not as funny as I thought!

It was a joke rhetorical question. It’s just, it sounded like you could have been talking about er something else…

12

Mwahaha! :happy: Sorry, I didn’t think at all of this. :rofl:

13

I think that maybe you hit the point there: LD (well, a lot of things, come to that) seem to work best when one puts some effort into them, but (exaggerating for the purpose of getting a nice image) doesn’t sink one’s teeth and claws into it and tears and rants “I want I want I want!” :grrr: (Favorite truism: The dose makes the poison.)

Sadly, I only had one LD so far, and that came when I didn’t do many techniques, just a couple of RCs when I thought of them.

As for that: I programmed my cell phone to remind me to do an RC every hour. Another and maybe even better approach is to take a trigger and do an RC every time it turns up - every time you hear music, meet somebody, walk through a door, enter a room, open a book. Something you do often, and ideally something that turns up in your dreams. (I don’t know how dream recall is working for you?)

I noticed that on average, I dream more vivid when I sleep in a different location. I think that one LD occured when I was back home after being away for a few days. Please don’t get your hopes up too high, but maybe you could try sleeping on a couch or something like that.

Okay, now that sounds familiar. I have the same trait and while it keeps boredom away, it can be a real pest. Speaking as somebody incredibly incredibly old and, well, not very wise for it: Getting a grip on that could save you worse frustration that not having a LD.

Out of curiosity: what sort of things do you usually try out?

14

I would suggest you buy Stephen LaBerges book: Exploring The World of Lucid Dreaming. I used to have trouble with MILD etc, it isnt really clearly defined anywhere. Its an easy concept, but without a solid definition, being told something is easy is frusterating and annoying. In EWLD, it`s described very clearly and solidly. If you are into lucid dreaming at all, I would recommend it. All the different techniques are explained thoroughly and clearly. Unfortunately, my dog recently ate my copy, and now I have to buy another one, haha. Silly pooch, lol, hopefully he enjoyed the book. What a goof. :balloon:

15

:lol: I didn’t think that actually happened!

Definitely buy the book, £10 well spent.

16

And I’m sure you forgot to perform a RC. :tongue:

17

If you have a watch set the alarm on said watch to ring every 20 minutes and do a RC when it rings. Or write RC on your palm so whenever you look at your hand it will tell you to do one and after some chances are you will look at your hand see the word RC written and do one. With these two methods the only thing you have to remeber is to truly ask your self if you are awake with every RC and not just do it without thinking.
If you really want LD’s you should really try to find a WBTB method because that will increase your chances ten fold. If you find with 6 hours you cant get back to bed shorten you time or with 4 you fall asleep to quickly increase the time next time. It may take a week or two to figure out what is the right time for you. One last tip for WBTB if possible make it so you dont have to get out of bed to turn off the alarm. which will make it even easeir to fall asleep with more sleep time. or try some autosuggestion to wake yourself up :tongue: .
Keep a DJ it is vital. Good Luck

18

Dont worry Ledgen you will get to the point where having an LD is as easy as telling yourself you will but it takes some time and effort at first.

Start a DJ on this forum so then we can help motivate you to stick with it however long it takes thats what I do when I need motvation i get like minded people to rally for me. because i know everyone on this forum would gladly help