I had what appears to be my first intentional lucid dream last night and wanted to share my experience and get some input from more advanced lucid dreamers. I recently finished Andrews book Dream Yoga and in the middle of reading LaBerge’s book Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. Last night was the first night I tried the MILD technique from his book. I had about 9 dreams (including smaller dream fragments) that I was able to recall through the night and the one of interest I’ll relate below:
I was on the side of a rocky cliff and there were large rock formations floating in the air around me. I looked towards one of the formations and saw a rock creature separate from one of the floating mountains of rock and start to come towards me rapidly while looking directly at me. (Worth noting I had no fear in the dream which considering my fear of heights and would be fear of rock monsters if they were hurtling towards me in real life, was notable) Before the creature got to me I drew a deep breath and blew hard towards it and it blew the creature away from me. Suddenly the thought popped in my head, “Wait…I Can’t blow a rock away with my mouth I must be dreaming!” (Because anyone knows that in real life when you are hanging on a cliff with floating mountains and a rock creature comes at you, the thought of blowing it away is just silly lol) My thoughts seemed very clear all of a sudden and I felt excitement rise up. I thought that the excitement might pull me out of the dream so I needed to try to temper it somehow. I remembered reading that you can look down at the ground to calm the dream and help extend lucidity, but I didn’t want to try that because I was up on a mountain and for some reason thought it might wake me up. Then I remembered that my dream plan was to try and fly once I got in a dream. I started to think about flying but it didn’t happen easily. I focused my will and let go of the rock and didn’t fall and did feel some control of my movement and the rocks floating around me, but didn’t seem to have the ability to truly fly through the space around me with any speed. At this point I woke up from the dream.
After waking up from the dream I was surprised that the excitement didn’t seem to fully come along with my waking up. I realized soon thereafter that I still seem to harbor some doubt as to the process of lucid dreaming. One of the thoughts that bubbled up soon after waking from the dream was, “How do I know for sure that it wasn’t just a dream that I dreamed I was lucid?” My thoughts certainly felt clear and it definitely felt as though I was having a fluid inner dialogue on the spot in my dream with awareness. Its seems unlikely that I would have a dream with such thought detail that also correlated with my plan prior to sleeping. That being said it is my own mind, so who’s to say I couldn’t dream up thoughts that were in line with the materials I had been reading?
Also, does it even matter? If I am in a dream and have clear thoughts that I am in a dream, and perform actions based on those thoughts, then remember clearly everything in the morning, is it even possible that it is not a lucid dream?
Another question…is it normal when you have a lucid dream that you might not be able to modify the dream as much as you would like despite being lucid? Why was flying so difficult despite being lucid?
Kind of a long post with some tangents but would be great to hear some thoughts on this.
Hey Mac, congratulations to your first intentional lucid dream!
Also, being able to recall 9 dream/dream fragments is pretty cool.
For me, waking up after LD is also not always totally euphoric but there is always a sense of satisfaction.
The widely accepted definition of dream lucidity is that within the dream you know it is a dream. It sounds to me that this was clearly the case.
Another clear pointer is that you decided to try flying and ended up controlling your movements to some extent, which represents an act of conscious will. Yet another pointer is clarity and/or vividness, more than a regular non-lucid dream.
yep, exactly. Were you just unconsciously watching a movie (like in a regular non-lucid dream) or was it a vivid, active integrated experience? Sounds like the latter. → LD
well, who decides if this matters?
Yes, completely normal. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes harder.
When it is sometimes a little harder to move through walls, fly, etc. I focus in the LD and say to myself something like “This is a dream.” and remember that I did all these things easily before. And thus change my expectation and force of confidence. Then it works for me. Above all, remember to relax all mental tensions while interacting with resistances in dreams.
Its good to hear your descriptions of lucid dreaming. Based on your comments it certainly does seem to confirm the lucid dream. There was definitely a clear thought that I was in a dream, along with conscious dream movements. The vividness I would say seemed to surround my thoughts more than the visual content of the dream, that part didn’t seem to change much. My thoughts just seemed so much more crisp and different than the typical hazy dream thinking.
Also good to know control can vary. I’ll try to remember your suggestions on helping exert some influence on the dreams.
Only problem is now I’m ready to go to bed so I can try it again and its only 3:55pm !!
haha, if it’s too early, you might consider taking a daytime nap and WILD into it a lucid dream
P.S. You might want to play around at any time between LD in which you take more or less control and with dreams in which you remain lucid and passive and let the creativity of the dream unfold, i.e. witnessing LD… imo both forms have much to give to the dreamer.
I had a waking lucid dream once and called this woman from her house she walked out into the street to meet me realistic as anything blue skin wearing a neopreen surfers suit and walked right up to me and then I woke up Shes been there wating for me to answer here for months now as i can stil make out the outline of her face standing there listening to everything im going through in life. So I made more a HUD system that does the same for me.
Mcker Ive learned that FLYING like a lot of dream elements your mind got used to to deliver ideas you blocked makes it into the scene as a substitute for something else going on… Your mind is simply adjusting to the thought by making a flying thing. If you manage to mantra all the elements of flying by way of repetition of actual flying then flying will become real flying and you should have better luck at flying deliberately for as long as you want eventually Inevitably because your not there for entertainment but to face thoughts you avoided in waking hours your inception will kick in and figure out problems almost immediately and end the need for flying to escape. So then you must mantra fun with flying and whole scenes eventually It really is all about mixing messages up with regular dreams just so your mind feeds you the bad news without shocking you. as soon as you can flow chart or compartmentalize this the elements wont be so polluted and your abilities will become unshared by other words stories blood pressures etc. It always helps to imagine the real world as a dream as well to lessen the shock of sudden realization. I flow chart all my choices dream or wake My situation is from an aversion therapy that killed off my regular thoughts followed its way into my dreams shocking and torturing me so that dream elements had to be shocked and replaced thus exposing the feelings of the differences. As soon as I realized lesbians had to wear beards i learned the message was be all right being said really quickly. beard bearite FellI Fly fellow traveler float try filer. Hope That helps
Thanks for the comments. Imagining the real world as a dream world to help lessen the shock makes sense. I’ve yet to start practicing illusory form as is suggested in Holecek’s book but plan to it sounds very interesting on a number of levels.
well, who decides if this matters?
