The Secret of Frequent Lucid Dreamers

[Corbinn]

@dB_FTS

You don’t have to say it aloud, you can just say it in yourself but if you feel that you need to say it aloud then do.

do I actually think back at what I was just doing?

Yes, try to remember what you were doing last hour… and in detail!

thankyou , i will now frequently start doing this in my life.

[Rhewin (Who is The Doctor?)]

Corbin, the main thing you’ve got to understand is that it’s not the question per se, it’s the mind set. You’ve got to make sure to keep questioning things, always have a little bit of doubt. You can never be 100% sure you’re awake and there’s always a chance you’re dreaming. This is key to LL.

[Corbinn]

@Rhewin

Corbin, the main thing you’ve got to understand is that it’s not the question per se, it’s the mind set. You’ve got to make sure to keep questioning things, always have a little bit of doubt. You can never be 100% sure you’re awake and there’s always a chance you’re dreaming. This is key to LL.

Ok, will stick to it, thanks alot

[KewinKiwi]

I have been trying to keep a consistent lucid mindset for the past couple of years, yet I have yet to achieve more than 2 lucid dreams per months. I am constantly questioning my reality. I often think ‘how did I get here?’ or ‘what was I just doing?’ yet I still have trouble inducing frequent lucid dreams.
So what am I doing wrong?

[Maglii]

Wow! Instead of doing this lucid dreaming thing as a causual hobby including writing in a DJ and hope I’ll ask myself if I’m dreaming at the right time, I’m going to make this a lifestyle! I’ll most likely update you all on how it’s been going in about a month from now!

[Mefaso]

This explains why I was able to remember nearly every dream I had after a nightmare. When I was young I sometimes had nightmares and after them I remembered nearly anything of other dreams.
But the theory about the frequently repeating reality checks while awake is VERY old. I heard about this 8 years ago in a newspaper, TV and such stuff.

[cyachallenge]

@imj

Critical checking of reality may lead to schizophrenia over time…I honestly feel it will because I have been doing that critical checking for too long and I realized over time it will create a loose sense of what real is and then spiral toward confusion and ultimately schizophrenia like feelings and thoughts so I strongly believe this process of attaining lucidity is not for everyone unless the individual has a very firm grip on reality but then again having strong grip would negate the critical checking of reality so I would say it’s not entirely safe for the mind.

IMJ

Psychotic episodes are quite similar to hypnagogia or hypnopompic states. It’s fair to say that they are likely part of the same type of mental activation. There’s some empirical fMRI evidence for this connection actually. It’s also true that LD is performed within a hypnagogic or hypnopompic state. However, there’s a theorized mechanism which is disadvantaged in the schizophrenic brain.

The regions of the brain which allow them to reason critically are inhibited or overactive in the schizophrenic person. It’s theorized that micro-sleep periods occur after states of hyperarrousal which impose rapid degregation of the rational RL to hypnagogic states. Their neurotransmitters seem to be off. They experience hypnagogic states unintentionally and they occur during waking times.

Now that these things have been said, it’s important to note that we all experience dream states. Particularly we all “hallucinate” as it were during our sleep. This is a natural mechanism that is distorted with schizophrenic individuals through some means, particularly the timing of sleep phenomenon. There’s no reason to think that exploring your subconscious creates a chemical imbalance.

I use critical RC, it just seemed likely the reasonable method of RC. If thinking critically causes psychosis then all intelligent people should be psychotic, and contrary to popular opinion they’re not. I’m a philosophy major and found it very second hand. There’s explicit differences between dreams and reality which are quite comforting. There’s a lack of continuity and consistency in the dream world.

Perceptial differences differ quite clearly, for example convergence (eye) can disappear or not occur at all if it is tested in a dream. Dreams have a tendency to project our personal understanding of the world. When we test something, the dream does it’s best to project the reflection of that knowledge. However the time from critique to successful resolution of incorrect projection is quite noticable under scrutiny. Also, that RL includes endless information which we can resolve into knowledge. At it’s heart the SC and LD instead rely on our knowledge to project reality synthetically, it’s a different mode of awareness.

[Lucid_Sockhat]

Mr. Waggoner, it’s a pleasure to see you posting in this forum. Your book is on my shelf along with the works of LaBerge.

[Dumax]

Hi, Im new to this site and I like this method. I have made my checks. Where Am I? Why Am I Here? How Do I Get Here?
Is It good? And also, how frequently should I do those tests to take effect, to get “MindSet”. Is it possible with few checks a day?
Thanks!

[BrightVoid]

Dumax,

Yes, it is good. You can do it as many times as you want to (the more, the better), as long as you remember to do them. You also want to ask the questions with thought, not mindlessly (if you get what i mean).
Good luck!

[Hedmalm]

After getting the mindset, i could check every 2-10 min asking myself in my head:

“what did i do before this?”

then thinkin back “in rough”, i remembered my day. for example:

“before this i was in class, and before that i was at home doing the usual” or something like that.

I thought that question was the most suitable for me as im very forgetful and it helped me remember.

It took me about 2-3 weeks before it got to this stage and it was quite annoying at times when my head asked this question to frequently.
(doing nothing tends to get me to do the checks super-frequent for some reason)

And as you already know (hopefully),
my aim is to get the answer:

“before this i went to bed…ooh wait im dreaming!!”

I hope this will prove helpful for someone interested in this subject.

[DreamSailor]

i love this, its very helpful, i have been having more LDs lately but still not as many as i would like, so this may help be have more frequent LDs. the basic idea is to frequently and consistently do reality checks by asking a critical question, for me it would be either “where am i” or “am i dreaming” since in dreams i tend to end up in so many different places i have never been and when i wake up i wish i was lucid there.

asking myself what i was doing before this probably won’t help though, because i don’t know how i would remember going to bed while in a dream.

[Draglide12]

I’ve crippled myself in this case haha. I spend the first two hours (roughly) after I wake (I get up really early, about 4:00) in a trance state. My mind is left to wander freely through whatever reality I decide on so my transition from outlandish dream scenarios to waking reality is blurred. =\

[HelpMe]

Haha, curse my impeccable memory!

[Koharo (Wanderlust Brawler/Private Contractor)]

…Will do…

[NAIAD]

@Robert Waggoner

[title]The Secret of Frequent Lucid Dreamers[/title]
[color=blue]by Robert Waggoner ( www.lucidadvice.com ) [/color]

Why do some dreamers immediately take to lucid dreaming, while others struggle to achieve lucidity even once?

I thought about this question recently when interviewing a young Norwegian woman, Line Salvesen, for The Lucid Dream Exchange. She claims to have about fifteen hundred lucid dreams a year. For most of us who average three or four lucid dreams a month, fifteen hundred per year sounds incredible!

She’s not the only person, though. Over the years, I have met a number of ultra-frequent lucid dreamers, on-line and in person. Curious about their ability, I began to search for some common characteristics – something to explain this high frequency. I noticed how they often assumed everyone dreamt lucidly, and felt shocked to learn this was not the case. In some cases, their frequent lucid dreaming could be traced back to persistent childhood nightmares where they learned how to achieve lucidity to deal with nightmare scenarios. In other cases, their frequent lucid dreaming seemed connected to certain waking mental habits.

Recalling my carefree college days studying behavioral psychology and reading Carlos Castaneda, I went from 3 to 8 lucid dreams a month to a high of 30 lucid dreams per month at my peak – all of which I nicely charted as a budding behaviorist. Some of this increase I could attribute to the use of the MILD technique. But decades later, when I began meeting ultra-frequent lucid dreamers, I began to feel a bit deflated, quantitatively speaking. How did they achieve lucidity so frequently?

Then a mini-epiphany came to me.
One day, reading an email from an ultra-frequent lucid dreamer, and feeling a tinge of envy mixed with curiosity I responded, “How? How do you become lucidly aware in almost every dream?” The lucid dreamer wrote that she had a consistent habit of asking herself repeatedly, “What was I just doing?” This mental habit carried over to her dreaming awareness, such that in the dream she would pose this exact question to herself, “What was I just doing?” Searching her mind, she realized she had been preparing for sleep, so therefore, she must be dreaming!

At that moment, a little light went on in my brain. Ultra-frequent lucid dreamers develop a lucid mindset.
A lucid mindset means a persistent mental habit of re-examining one’s perceived environment or state of awareness. Whether it involved memory or vigilance (e.g., Am I safe here from nightmares?), these ultra frequent lucid dreamers repeatedly checked or analyzed their current situation.

For some, numerous nightmares apparently reinforced the need to differentiate waking from dreaming, and allowed them to become highly attuned to dream state cues that would prompt lucid awareness. This habitual need to examine their state (waking or dreaming) naturally led to lucid dreaming, as a positive way to handle nightmares. Done with consistency over time, a lucid mindset developed, which became an unconscious and routine part of their dreaming life.

As for the lucid dreamer who consistently questioned herself to remember her last action, we find another type of lucid mindset. Here, she performs not so much a ‘reality check’ as a memory check that leads to a reality check! Her questioning leads her to re-examine more thoroughly her environment or current state, and she becomes lucid. Whatever the underlying motivation, certain habitual mental patterns lead these ultra-frequent lucid dreamers to examine their perceived environment or current state more closely.

So how can you use this knowledge to become a more frequent lucid dreamer? How can you work towards developing a lucid mindset? Or do you have a touch of a lucid mindset already, which you just haven’t noticed?

Next, we’ll explore these ‘critical questions’ and see how we can develop our lucid mind.
When you read the papers of the late Gestalt psychologist and lucid dream researcher, Paul Tholey, you discover a pioneer in developing a lucid mindset. (Again, I define a lucid mindset as a persistent mental habit of re-examining one’s perceived environment or state of awareness. This re-examination naturally leads to conscious awareness in the dream state.)

In 1959, Tholey wondered if he could bring conscious awareness into the dream state by asking himself numerous times during the day, “Am I awake, or am I dreaming?” Reasoning that this question would occur to him in a dream, he then might become critically aware and conscious in the dream. After about a month’s consistent repetition of this question, he succeeded with his ‘Reflection Technique’ and became lucid.

Some lucid dreamers have begun to call Tholey’s, “Am I awake, or am I dreaming,” the Critical Question.

It definitely seems ‘a’ critical question about one’s state – but it does not appear to be the only one, or the only one that leads to lucid awareness.

As previously mentioned, one ultra frequent lucid dreamer routinely asks, “What was I just doing?” This memory check prompts her lucid awareness, as she realizes she had been going to sleep, so this must be a dream. For her, the ‘Critical Question’ that elicits greater critical awareness is a memory check about activity.

Other ultra frequent lucid dreamers appear to develop greater vigilance as a result of frequent nightmares in childhood. Apparently, they habitually scour the perceived environment to determine if they are dreaming, and therefore possible prey for nightmarish figures. Perhaps their ‘Critical Question’ might be, ‘Am I safe here?’ or some expression of vigilant awareness which naturally leads to lucidity.

A lucid dreamer from the Ukraine told me of dream-mapping or trying to map out the dream locale of each lucid dream. Those who practice this technique frequently become lucid by asking themselves in a dream, “Where am I? What is this place?”

I imagine that young Buddhist monks learn to develop a lucid mindset when they repeatedly hear, ‘all of this is like a dream.’ If you consistently consider all perceived environments to be ‘like a dream,’ then you may enhance your ability to discern dreaming as being ‘like a dream’ and become consciously aware in it.

In my experience, I began to develop a lucid mindset after reading the works of Jane Roberts, who put forth that our perceived experience came as a direct outgrowth of our beliefs, thoughts and feelings. Therefore, understanding our experience required an investigation of our beliefs, thoughts and feelings. So when something notable would happen in my waking life, I would wonder, “Why did I create this? How does this relate to my beliefs, thoughts or feelings?” Like Tholey, these same questions began seeping into my dream life, prompting lucid awareness, as I re-considered an outlandish event and determined ‘This could only occur in a dream!’

These examples show how a lucid dreamer can easily develop a lucid mindset. By consciously adopting a Critical Question that appeals to you and requires you to re-examine your experience and by using it consistently during the day, it transfers to your dreaming and causes you to re-examine the dream experience. This questioning mindset naturally leads you to lucid awareness.

The Critical Question does not have to be philosophical; it can be simple, like ‘What was I just doing?’ or ‘Where am I?’ However it must be used consistently during waking hours.

Imagine an entire society and culture persistently asking a Critical Question. Maybe over time, lucid dreaming will lead to a worldwide lucid mindset,

Robert Waggoner

Great article, thanks!

[Antylamon]

My brother is one of them…

He says that 65 to 70 percent of his dreams are lucid dreams. They were mostly low lucidity, except for three that were absolute lucidity.

Now I can finally stop being jealous of him!

[Antylamon]

Is this some kind of elaborate joke? Everyone just stops posting on threads after I post…

[Lidybug (Love is Always the Answer!)]

Loved this post! I have noticed that since I stared LDing that questioning my reality by looking at all the details around me would help me become lucid. I can feel the conscious shift when I’m observing my reality. It’s as if everything all me senses become sharper. It’s realizing I exist and where I’m existing.
Thank you Robert for posting!

[Genre]

This is such useful information! I will be using this! “What was I just doing?” - Lucid mindset, here I come.