After unsuccessfully trying the MILD technique for a while, I thought I’d ask this.
I’m originally from Russia, and having lived there for practically all my life, my native language is, well, Russian. Having said that, I now live in London and have no problem whatsoever using English in every-day life.
Whenever I recited a mantra for MILD (“The next time I’m dreaming, I will realise that I’m dreaming”), I always did so in English. My question is, does the language matter? Should I translate the mantra into Russian and do it in my native language? Or is there no difference? Calling out the international lucid-dreamers out there for thoughts/opinions/facts.
The words or the language do not matter if you really know what they mean.
The mantra can be anything that reminds you of dreaming and RCing and stabilizing your dream.
If a noise or a song or anything else reminds you of that, it is fine.
But still, I recomend using the present tense, because, if you take your current mantra literally, you might be waiting to become lucid in your next dream, even if you are already dreaming.
I have always wondered if native language was more effective than a second language. I guess i will be trying out the mantras in english for a month or so to see how it goes for me.
Thanks for the replies, and for the warm greetings! I never thought about the mantra in the way you said, I’ll try it in present tense.
The one and only time I had a successful lucid dream, I fell asleep to a binaural beat with a voice over saying “The next time I’m dreaming, I will realise that I’m dreaming”, so since then I just tried it with the same mantra. I’ll try switching I guess.
I always wondered about this myself, being from Sweden and not actually a native speaker.
But I figured that it really shouldn’t matter that much, since I’m proficient enough in English to sometimes actually forget that it even is a foreign language to me (I like to use the exact phrases as they are written in English, since it’s sometimes hard to come up with a good Swedish alternative).
But it’s certainly possible that the mantras will have a greater “impact” in your native language, since it was the language you grew up with.
Well what ever “sinks” in the best is supposed to work the best… I would guess that your native Lagrange would be the best, unless a second language has a word or phase that seems to apply to MILD most (there should be a LD language… ) that would be best.
