Greetings to all! It is just wonderful to climb on board the dream machine (ha!) here. Have been taking part in a lot of Andrew’s happenings since covid started, and joined up for the dream book study. (that last phrase is purposely ambiguous)
I used to lucid dream not infrequently just for fun around 20 years ago. Now I sleep less due to changes in the body/brain, and don’t dream as much, with lucid dreams being occasional.
Sometimes in a lucid dream, I will ask one of my teachers a deep question that is in my heart. Have been doing that for decades, and it always shines some light.
If I watch a video of one of my teachers before bed, such as a teaching video or an excerpt from a bio video, it can really impact my dreams. One great source is old films of Ramana Maharshi, if you have a connection with him.
Mingyur Rinpoche is my primary teacher.
Daytime practices in Andrew’s new book Dreams of Light will be more my focus in joining up. And will do some fun deep study on the whole dream and sleep topic with Andrew’s resources, the wonderful friends he interviews and the community. Not going to put pressure on myself to ‘perform’ but take it playfully. Will also be happy with any moment of lucidity, dreaming or awake. Blessings to all!
I’m also quite interested in learning more from Kashmir Shaivism and bought Chris Wallis’ books at Andrew’s recommendation. So if Andrew ever veers into this topic here, I won’t mind a bit!
It is interesting that sometimes if I wake in the night, I’ll practice (Buddhist deity sadhana) for awhile, and then go back to sleep towards morning and have very fruitful dreams, if not lucid, still quite meaningful, and sometimes symbolic.
I’m adding this coda because I think it’s funny and really telling. One night I listened to Andrew’s Foundations of Lucid Dreaming for 45 minutes right before bed. The next morning I woke up absolutely convinced that some of my dream before waking had actually happened. There was a strong sense of time in the dream; that some weeks or months had passed in between parts of the dream. This was fascinating to me; how does one convey time has passed in such a clear way in a dream? I really thought that my dream was a continuation of something that had occurred in waking life. Most of my dreams are one scene, or maybe there’s a long scene and it morphs into one or more scenes. But nothing so elaborate as this. It’s as if the ‘dream directors and producers’ got together and said “she’s on to us! We’ve got to go all out to make this one seem really real! We’ll employ a dream whisperer to convince her that a month has passed.” Before going to sleep I did playfully think “I will recognize my dreams” and could hear in my mind Mingyur Rinpoche repeating several times ‘I will recognize my dreams’; I’ve heard him speak on this at various times, and his voice is very familiar to me.
The makers of the emperor’s clothes were being very vigilant that night to make sure I didn’t realize it’s all illusion. And to own up - yes, it was my dreaming monkey mind that came up with it all. The dream whisperer is me. 
Last night in my sleep, a mantra was going through my mind, looping back like a mobius strip, over and over, in a melodic chant. This is a mantra I repeat dozens of times a day. Hadn’t heard this melodic version from my music library in many months. It just showed up in sleep and kept going. But it was my voice singing it in sleep, not the recording artist. I started to wake up with it and ended up making myself wake up all the way so I could record it as I didn’t realize it was one I’ve heard before. In sleep, I did add one note that looped the mantra back without pause. It seemed that the mantra started within a dream, but then there was only mantra, no dream.
These two recent experiences confirm what Andrew says – that once you start studying the subject of dream and lucid dreaming and putting your mind on it, your dream experiences will light up (my wording, not his) and it will bear fruit.
And here is a little plug for Andrew’s concise audio course Foundations of Lucid Dreaming on Teachable. I’ve not tried to employ techniques in lucid dreaming before joining nightclub . For beginners, I think this course is just the thing. I listened to all of it in a week’s time. The first day while kind of waking up, I used one of Andrew’s suggestions and already had a result. This morning, again, I tried another technique and again had some fun and success. Heartily recommend this course; it’s giving me a good diving platform.