What should I do now?

Quest for Lucidity
1

I have been trying to LD for about a month and a half now and so far I haven’t had too much luck. I have had two LDs in my life and they both occured about two years ago. In both of those I managed to do a RC and I became lucid. But now that I am getting back into LDing RCs dont work! I have gotten to the point where I actually do RCs all the time in my dreams from force of habit but I don’t become lucid. I don’t just check to see if I can breathe through my plugged nose or see if I have 5 fingers, whenever I do a RC in RL I always check my surrounding and make sure I am not dreaming. The thing is, I do the same exact thing in my dreams but I just don’t ever seem to realize I am dreaming EVER! So I have pretty much crossed RCs off my list of techniques. WILDs I thought my work but the thing is I can never get through the whole process. I either get freaked out or I just get tired of it and go to sleep. I am thinking MILD could be my best bet but it just hasn’t seemed to work for me yet. Also, WBTB kills me because anytime I wake up from sleep I can’t get back to sleep for at least a couple of hours (And that ends up hurting my schedule for the day since I am so tired).

Does anybody know what I might be able to try next? I will keep trying MILD but I have nothing else. I can easily visualize things in my mind and I can also have vivid day dreams so I am wondering if that could help me. Its just pretty frustrating that I do RCs so many times in my dreams but they don’t work.

2

:eh: I’m always surprised when I find I’m lucid dreaming because everything seems SO normal even if it isn’t! I have done reality checks and they have not worked and afterwards I have looked around to see if anything doesn’t seem normal and everything seems perfectly normal even if there is a staircase above my head ascending up to nowhere. What I found is that RC only work if I try the same one over and over again right after each other. When I first hold my nose I might not be able to breath but if I keep trying and pay attention to what I’m doing then it works. Just like if I look at a clock and look back the first time it usually has the same time but the third time it changes even if it only skips one minute. Also I just figured this out last night. There have been times when i think maybe I’m dreaming but I know I’m laying in bed and everything is dark. Usually after doing WIlD. I thought if I’m dreaming why is everything so dark and why do I know I’m laying right here in my bed? Then I forced myself to open my eyes even though I thought it would wake me up and sure enough I was laying in bed and everything seemed normal but i knew I was still dreaming because I did the hold your nose a breath RC. I felt as if every movement was going to wake me up but it didn’t. To get out of bed was SO difficult, my body was so heavy like when you have to get out of bed in the middle of the night to pee. I kept doing RC the whole time because I kept thinking I was waking up.
Anyway I know you said RC were not working for you but maybe this might help alittle, if not I’m sorry I could not help.
Good luck with you LD’s!
Sweet Dreams,
Lidy :wink:

3

If RCs don’t work for you, then MILD won’t work either. MILD relies partially on RCs, therefore, with failing reality checks it has a 90% chance of failure. I’m guessing your best bet would actually be WILD, since it is not neccesary to perform reality checks in the process.

4

I havent read your post at all but I think i can help you:

  1. you say you´ve started for one month and a half??? lol in this time i was able dto improve my Dream Memory keep going
  2. For me it is so: RCs arent the things that make me thinking that this could be a dream. I sometimes am in a dream and then it hit me suddenly (50 % of a dream sign 50% without a sign). And the RC is the thing where i proove that im dreaming. So dI dont do RCs every hour or something like that, this doesnt work. If you think much about LD and you want it, then you´ll wake up in your Dream.
5

I have only read the last part of your post - It just frustrates me that I’ve been doing RCs that don’t work.

Just think about this for a moment.

People see elephants in the streets, fireballs coming from the sky, what not… when they’re dreaming, yet they still fail to realize that they’re dreaming.

Please, be a bit logical here. When you just think about it, you can come up with much better techniques than RCing.

What you want to do is heighten your awareness.

Makes sense doesn’t it ?

There’s lots of ways to do that, but here’s just a few ideas.

For starters, applying RCs such as looking at your hands isn’t very beneficial. What you get out of RCing is the actual effort you put into being consciously aware.

If you look at your hands without any real effort to be aware, you’re not really doing anything.

If RCs feel right to you, you can switch to ones such as recalling your activities that lead you to where you are. So whenever you remember to RC, just think back to the last time you woke up and recall every place or ‘scene’ you’ve been in until the present moment.
So, for instance, you might go … "I woke up… went out for a jog… ate… been to the beach… sat in a garden and read that book… had lunch there… etc… " till now.

The more you break it down , the better. So for example, you could break down the beach scene into many different scenes. I sat on the beach meditating, I swam in the water, I talked with a few people near the cooler etc…

What is important is to really RELIVE those experiences .

That one is really an awareness heightening drill.

Other things you can do is just be aware.

So every time you remember, just look around, feel your environment. Be aware of your experience.

You can also just pretend you are dreaming and do what you would in a dream. or just pretend doing it or trying to manipulate physical objects.

The point is to keep raising your bar. To remain aware.

The moment such an activity falls into a routine, it becomes just that, a routine.

You need to constantly push yourself and really really BE AWARE.

Don’t just look and say oh of course im awake.

Just really look around, investigate the surroundings.

REALLY check to see if you’re ‘awake’ , explore your limits.

An example of a very efficient daily ‘awareness activity’ would be:

First, create a cue. Something that’s very common but not to common. Something I used in the past is reflections. Every time I saw myself in a mirror, on a screen, on the water, or from any other reflection, I would stop and be aware. Use your cue to really pretend you’re dreaming. If you’re looking at a mirror, really check to see if you can move your hand through it, see how it feels etc…

The key with using cues is to condition yourself to ‘test’ every time you encounter one so just keep at it, after a few weeks, it will become deeply rooted in you. One thing you can do to program yourself to be aware of the cues is , when you’re daydreaming, relaxing, showering, waking up, etc (generally when you’re ‘off into inner space’) experience, as best you can, you seeing, being aware of the cues, and acting upon them. Simply doing it is also fine, will just take a bit longer

Asides from the cues, make yourself a ‘mantra’ such as ‘I am aware’ ’ I am aware of my location’ ‘I am aware of my surroundings’ ‘I consciously know where I am’ etc… Again the key is to really feel the sentence you’re saying and experience it, whether or not it is true for you. It’s not about just blabbing the words. That’s just useless.

Whenever you just think about lucid dreaming, or when you just have a glimpse of awareness , whenever you remember what you’re doing, just say the mantra to yourself, follow with the reliving past events to this moment in time, say the mantra again and continue on with your daily activities.

As you’re falling asleep, repeat the mantra several times, as much as you can, and as you begin feeling yourself drifting off to sleep, ‘visualize’ yourself having a lucid dream. Don’t try to implicate it into the future, don’t analyze whether or not it will happen. Just experience mentally a lucid dream. Experience the sudden realization that you are dreaming, the emotions you will feel as a result and everything you will experience if you will lucid dream. Again, don’t try to think this will or will not happen. Just pretend you are lucid dreaming, mentally, as you fall asleep

You can also do this visualization throughout the day
Remember, visualization doesn’t necessarily mean seeing it happen, it means mentally experiencing it.

Combine the mantra and also just feel that you are going to be lucid in the dream. Just feel it as best you can. Project it. Do not project a wish to be lucid. Project a feeling that you will be lucid. A calm and certain knowing that you will be lucid. Remember, as best you can.

Again, the key is to keep pushing yourself over the edge. Make it a routine to break any routine. Never spot one of your cues and just go ‘I’m awake…’ KEEP PUSHING YOURSELF OVER THE EDGE. Constantly be more and more aware.

Additional things you can do, which might sound counter intuitive, but will really help you is to let go of your desire to have a lucid dream, to let go of your wanting to change things, to let of any associations you have with regards to lucid dreaming, and generally anything at all.

I guarantee you that if you really keep such a schedule, you will begin to lucid dream pretty much every night, automatically.

If you find this helpful, you will probably learn from other posts of mine.

Have a terrific day,

Ariel

6

The reality checks work for many people, but I never used them and I am able to achieve a lucid dream fairly often by using mild and wild. My advise to you is; don’t get frustrated, keep a dream journal, and use mild… You don’t have to dedicate your life to lucid dreaming to have one.