Alright, I know I shouldn’t be discouraged yet so I’m mostly just reporting this for sake of discussion.
Last night was my first full-blown attempt to induce an LD. I went to bed at 10:30 PM or so with an alarm set for 4:00 AM.
I had a LD induction mp3 playing in the background, it was mostly ambient noise and a guy saying things like “I am aware that I am dreaming.” and “I will remember to check my reality and to identify that I am in a dream state”.
It was cool at first but I had it on a bit too loud and it was probably keeping me awake. Then this really bassy pulsing beat started and it really freaked me out. I don’t know why. I had to go to the bathroom anyways so I turned the volume down and turned the bass down, and went to the bathroom. I came back out and went back to bed and after a while of trying to count to 100 while repeating “I am dreaming” and failing I fell asleep.
I wake up to the alarm at 4:00 AM and I haven’t dreamt anything yet, or I don’t recall it I mean. I go over to my PC and read the Wikibook and browse the forums for about 20-30 minutes. I go back to bed and repeat mnemonics in my head and try to get to sleep. This is where one of the problems occurs… I think I was basically too excited or possibly just not tired enough to get back to sleep, which makes sense since I took the day off from school and I wasn’t very fatigued.
I finally did though, and I did indeed have a dream. However it didn’t even occur to me once that I might be dreaming.
It took me a minute or two upon awakening to realize I had dreamt at all, because it seemed real at the time. But I remember it quite vividly now, and I wrote it down.
Anyways, I’m encouraged by what seems to be a marginal improvement in dream recall, even though I had no clue I was dreaming.
If you aren’t tired enough, this might have a negative effect on the auto-suggestion, because it should te somewhat the last thought on your mind before you fall asleep. You can’t expect yourself to repeat your mnemonics for an hour or so… gets too boring. So either you should wake up earlier in the night (when you are probably more tired), or stay up shorter. Or a combination of these, as a matter of fact you just have to try and test and see what works best for you. Good luck!
