I think willing yourself to do something, lets say LDIng, for a long period of time will eventually become a habit and easy for your mind to accomplish.
Exactly. When I first started willing myself to have lucid dreams, it was more of a hit and miss technique, because I would only succeed half of the time. After time, however, I have become more proficient at it and I can now have a lucid dream on whatever night I choose.
I think the problem with don’s way is that if your goal and expectation is to have 1 LD every 5 nights, before the 5 nights are up you will have already subconsciously planted a seed of doubt in your mind. Ex. after the first night, if you didn’t have a LD you would say to yourself, “It’s alright. I have 4 more nights to have one.” Then after the 2nd night, “It’s OK…3 more nights.” But eventually, if you didn’t have one by the third or fourth night, you will be worried that you only have one or two nights left, and these negative thoughts might cause you to not have one.
Yes, it is not perfect and will not work for everyone, but it can take some of the pressure off so that some people could get to the point where they can “let it happen”. I would never say that anything is 100% sure to get you an LD. For your first LD mindset has a lot to do with it, and if you are putting too much pressure on yourself, then that could get in the way. Doing this, you can take some of the pressure off. Thats really all it is supposed to do, give your mind the free space to experience LD.
don
I just had ONE freaky experience. I willed myself to have a LD, like normal, but this time I ended up having an OBE. This OBE wasn’t normal though. It was a time travel OBE, back to the days when I was 14.
It started like a normal OBE. I rose out of my body and was trying my hardest to break away from the bonds holding me so close. Finally I broke free and floated down the hall. To my surprise everything was very vivid and it was easy to manuever, unlike my previous OBE experiences. I was just floating around, when I thought of one of my friends I wanted to go see. I snapped back hovering over my body, but didn’t go in. I decided I had better go back and was focussing on my feet to get back in. It wasn’t working. It always had before! I panicked and was trying full-force to shove myself back into my body. It wasn’t working!!! I couldn’t make myself return!
Then, to my amazement, my body (which appeared 4 years younger) stood up and walked down the hall to the computer room (where I am as a type this). My parents and younger brother were standing around making plans for the day. I floated in behind my body and watched in horror as it communicated with my parents. They were talking about plans for the day. I was in shock! No one could see me! They could only see my body, which was being animated by the means of my consciousness 4 years ago. After finishing a conversation with my parents, my body walked across the hall into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, examining its face. I at this point, made myself appear to myself. I really creeped myself out (no pun intended). The other me looked like he had seen a ghost (which he had). I was trying to explain that I came out of the body and I NEEDED to go back in, because I was stuck. The other me was just giving me an awkward look, when suddenly he pulled out his ID and begin examining his picture with me. I rolled my eyes. I began forcing my way back into the body and pleading with God to let me go back. Finally I opened my eyes and was lying back in bed at the desired time… now let me check the date.
Does anyone do the ‘Strengthening Your Will’ exercises at the back of EWLD or anything similar? I’ve been trying it and haven’t got past step 2 yet because I haven’t done 2 of the tasks 2 days in a row! I’m so lazy! They’re easy to do but I always think, ‘Ugh, I can’t be bothered, I’ll do it later.’. 
I used to do that technique. I don’t need it anymore. I am will power now. lol 
That’s cool. Have you tried anything like telekinesis? It would be interesting to see whether it’s down to willpower or something else.
Yeah, I used to practice TK a lot, but quit because once I got my job I really had no more time to sustain it. I got the wheel to spin a few times, by will alone.
Darxide, that OBE experience is truly freaky and I loved reading about it! It sounds like it really freaked you out but consider yourself lucky, you seem really advanced compared to a lot of us here! 
That OBE sounds funny and horrifying at the same time. I had a ND about an OBE last night, and the funny thing was the last thing I accidentally suggested to myself before I went to bed was: I will have an out of body experience,I will have a lucid dream. Leave it to my head to intermingle dreaming and OBE-ing. If only the dream had gone lucid… Aw well, I’ll take it as a good omen.
Hahah, nice. 
OBEs are great - if you’re the type of person who likes horror movies.
I’ve been trying for the past two nights, and no luck yet.
I’ve been trying this for about a week. Nothing out of the ordinary, but its something I haven’t mastered. I know the idea, but beleiving completely is still beyond me.
I’ve tried it for about a week, and i had an LD…but got lazy and couldnt sustain it… 
This replies to a deleted post about belief.
Belief can come from one of two sources, or a combination of them. The first source is knowledge, the second is faith. Every one has a different personality so you have to choose which of these two sources to draw your belief from.
Not that the two are mutually exclusive. To have knowledge of your strengths and weaknesses with particular dream skills, could help give you the faith you’re looking for.
I believe I may have discovered a new foundation for my faith this weekend, based on a fairly detailed analysis of what I am able to do really, really well, and how I could use this particular strength to achieve more proficiency with lucid dreaming.
Well it’s theoretical at the moment, but I do feel like I’m onto something, and have found this topic particularly inspiring Darxide
Personally I equate the world “belief” with “faith” exclusively and leave knowledge to its own domain, even though both lead to feelings of certainty about something. Belief/faith is when you have no body of evidence to support what you want to hold a conviction in, and is something I can’t stomache even though I hemmed and hawed and vaccilated back and forth between all sorts of quasi-faith-based practices in my early teens. If I want to have conviction in something, I have to know I can do it.
But just because I have that conviction doesn’t mean I can suddenly empower myself to do whatever the hell I want. I’ve been meditating before going to bed for about a week now, quieting all my senses and brain before telling myself several time that I will have a lucid dream and explaining to myself in detail what I’ll do to get there: recognize dream signs, do an RC, realize I’m dreaming, etc… When I do this I know that what I’m explaining to myself is completely doable, there’s no faith involved because everything I’m telling myself to do has been replicated with great success and with great scientific verifiability among a wide swath of different people and I know that there’s nothing psychologically or physiologically anomolous with me that would prevent me from acheiving the same results. When I do this autosuggestion before bed, there is no doubt in my mind.
But just willing myself to do it does not work! I have never had an inducted lucid dream, and the last spontaneous lucid dream I had was 7-8 years ago. This is the same as someone who’s been bedridden for 8 years signing up to climb Mount St. Helens and and expecting to succeed because he knows or believes he can do it. You need to have developed essential skills to use in conjuction with your indomitable willpower or else it doesn’t matter how psyched you are about getting lucid.
Sorry for maybe being a little bitter, but it hasn’t just been this last week where I’ve been trying to LD. On and off for the last 5 years I’ve been trying, when I try I try knowing that with enough hard work and effort I will achieve my goal - but that hasn’t helped me in actually achieving one because my induction skills have remained crappy and underdeveloped on the side.
Believing you’ll make it from New York to a place whose location is a mystery to you is fine, but if you don’t have a map to use to find your way, you’re pretty well buggered. Ultimately, if you’re forced to begin without the enlightening advantage of being experienced with spontaneous lucid dreams and understanding what they feel like and how to incubate them, then all the enthusiasm and belief in the world won’t be able to replace those skills.
I don’t think I’m voicing my opinion eloquently enough - maybe I’ll try again alter. Suffice it to say that I do get a little uppity around people who tell me that all my honest failures were just a result of my not “believing” in myself enough even when I know better than anyone the amount of belief I have in myself every night when I go bed telling myself without a doubt in my mind that I will have a lucid dream tonight. That’s not enough. It takes experience and knowledge of the mechanics of lucid dreams, things I have not garnered any meaningful amount of yet.
Spamtek, I think you’re trying to hard. Sure meditation is good for the mind and body, but it’s not necessary to will yourself into having a lucid dream. Balancing effort with ease is key to willing the induction of a lucid dream.
To be honest, all I do is just get in a comfortable position and suggest to myself once that at such and such time, I will spontaneously become aware that I am dreaming. I stop there. I don’t think about how, why or where. Just when. Then I completely change the topic of my mind and think about work, girls or games and let myself fall asleep.
I think it’s a lot more simple than you’ve anticipated.
Recently…my “belief” or “will” or whatever you want to call it, has really dropped. I no longer can induce a LD when I really want to, which sucks. All I can do now really with sleep, is to wake up after each dream (which I ‘programmed’ into my mind a long time ago).
So, as time went by, I became more unsatisfied with a lack of LDs…until last night.
I was working on one of the exercises in the ‘Strengthening your will’ topic. I was to stand on a chair for 5 minutes. So, I got a stop watch, stood on a chair, and pressed the button. I just tried to keep a blank mind while I stared off into nothingness. I look down at the watch, and it says 1:20 (watch is counting from 0:00 to 5:00). I wait more, then check it again, and it’s 2:20. I thought it was coincedence, but wanted to see if I could do it again. I waited, looked, and it was 3:20. I then heard a voice (subconcious??) type thing saying “isn’t it weird that you know exactly when to look at the watch?”. I looked at it again, it’s 4:20. The voice then says “Isn’t it weird you know when to stop it?”. Immediatly I stopped the watch. I look at it, and it is at exactly 5:00. 
Now…that may sound like I’m crazy, lol…but I’m not! (and I don’t do drugs) The voice was more like me thinking about it, but I wasn’t the one thinking about it. Something in my mind thought about it for me, and said it out loud or something…I dunno.
Anyways…after that, I thought I had telepathic abilities or something…so I tried doing it again. This time I only went to 1 minute. I pressed the button, and I waited to hear a new thought from my mind. I hear the words “30 seconds”. I wait more, and was about to hit the stop button because I thought it was a minute, but then I hear “don’t go too soon”. So I hold off. I then hear “now!”, so I press the button. 1:00.
I can’t tell you how many times I did this last night…lol. I really really think I’m on to something. It was almost as if I was communicating with my subconcious or something…which in that case, I could probably evolve this communication and have my subconcious give me lucid dreams at will!
I’ve also been thinking about whether or not I could predict what the next card is in a deck of cards… Cus if that works out…
Anyways…that’s my story. Am I looking at all of this the wrong way? Or, am I becoming a master of the mind?