I think that is a very mature and evolved way of looking at it. About a decade ago someone told me about LDs and how they could be used (abused) for sexual gratification. I am glad I followed my intuition at the time and did not listen to them or persue the practice then. I was mostly worried then it would fuck with my sleep, something I already wasnt getting enough of. Turns out not listening was a blessing in disguise.
The fact that you achieved lucidity before is a very big accomplishment, I think it destroys the some of mental constructs people who have not done it before have, thinking it may be impossible for people, or that they dont have the inherent abilities.
Have you tried the WBTB method? I did not use it until last weekend, but many of the top lucid dream experts I follow have said this method is the best for them at getting lucid. I shyed away from it for almost a year, becuase I was worried about not being able to get back to sleep. Now I figure I will do it once a week, on the weekend, where if I cant get back to bed, I can do make up sleep the following day.
Have heard really good things about the MILD method, this is also a practice I have not done very much of, bit have heard has really good results for people if practiced consistently.
This is really big! How often do you have OBEs? I have never had one, but have heard many of the top LD authors mention them, and mention their validity. I think they are real based on the reading and research I have done, but I am no expert. Looking forward to one day having them.
Another night of zero dream recall. Interesting how I’ve gone from recalling 3-4 dreams a night to zero.
Have had experienced an interesting phenomenon the last two nights. I’ll be try to fall asleep using some techniques like the 4-7-8 breath, 61 points, or reverse blinking. From my perspective, it doesn’t work. I’m unable to fall asleep. But after a while I experience a buzzing in my head and the phosphenes behind my eyes start going a little crazy. I think I might be falling asleep so I start counting thinking I might try a WILD. The buzzing resolves after 4 to 5 seconds though and I’m still awake. I confirm this by doing a reality check. However when I check the clock it appears a significant amount of time has passed since the last time I woke up and recorded “No dreams recalled” or some hypnagogic fantasy on my voice recorder. So maybe I did fall asleep? Or maybe I just was laying in bed for over an hour trying to fall asleep?
I know I was pretty excited about this but since I’ve experienced nights where I have little to zero dream recalls. I know this is overly dramatic but I’ll go with it anyways: part of me feels like the guy in the Parable of the Wedding Feast who gets thrown out of the wedding because he isn’t wearing wedding clothes. Just when it’s starting to get interesting, I get kicked out of the temple of Morpheus. What did I do, why are the gods judging me?!
Yeah this is exactly the reason I gave it up. I guess it was a lesson I had to learn. I needed to learn that dreams are a sacred space, a spiritual landscape, and I should treat them with respect.
Even when I tried it in 2015 I remembered spontaneous lucid dreams I have had before when I was growing up. I didn’t know they were called lucid dreams back then. So I always knew they were a possibility. I think it’s actually common for children and teenagers to have lucid dreams? I read that somewhere. It’s definitely an ability innate in being human: anyone can learn how to do it.
Not recently. I used it way back in 2015 to good results I remember. I haven’t tried it recently. Like you I’m worried about messing up my sleep.
If you wake up in the middle of the night for any reason, you can use that as an excuse to try a WBTB. Since you’re already up. I remember doing that back in the day.
MILD was mostly what I used last time around to great effect. I think it’s going to be my main induction method this time around too. I recommend trying it more, it’s definitely a powerful induction method.
Keep at it. I had the same frustations last year and still have them. Its part of the process. Your ‘water pot’ is getting close to starting to boil. Just got to keep up the intensity of the flames.
Amen, you and me both.
Me too, but not many. I think this happens becuase children and younger people are more open, and have less conceptual prisions holding them back.
I have been waiting to put it into practice after I finish Stephen LaBerges book, but I keep on finding different LD books to read, and get side tracked. Its actually I think close to a 1 year aniversery when I first bought Stephens book, so I have waited way too long. Time to jump back on that horse.
Have you tried taking a 4mg Galantamine suppliment before?
It can interact with medications, so best to talk with your doctor before trying it.
I dont take it everynday, but when my dream recal hits a wall, I find a day or too of taking the suppliment in the morning or at noon, can really help jumpstart the dream activity.
Another method is, before you go to sleep, in the liminal state, keep telling yourself over and over again that you will remember your dreams tonight (and have good dreams and have lucid dreams). That can often incubate strong dream recall.
Since stopping galantamine I’ve had to redevelop my recall and this is my goto method. Only difference is I say it once to myself while I am focused then I fall asleep and hope for the best. Back up to galantamine levels of recall but vividness….
Thanks for the encouragement! Yeah I know intellectually that some nights I will have zero recall. Still feels bad when it happens. Haha, I may be getting to invested in the results of all my reality checks, illusory form and dream journaling. Need to practice some karma yoga on all this.
Yes. I think that’s a trap that’s too easy to fall into. “Need to do more research before I start.” But you end up reading book after book and never get around to trying it. I did this for years with meditation until I actually sat down and tried it.
No. I had some African Dream Herb that I tried but so far it hasn’t done much. Maybe I should pick up some galantamine. I don’t want to rely on supplements, but every once in a while I suppose they can be useful.
I actually feel like this backfired for me. I have been doing this, repeating “I will remember my dreams” again and again while falling asleep like a mantra. I actually think it gave me anxiety about not being able to recall my dreams. So this last night I just repeated it to myself 4x then went to bed, and that seemed to help. I remembered one long dream and a dream fragment last night.
I also started supplementing this with noon and evening recalls of my waking day. Hopefully that should help train my memory.
How long did it take to get back to galantamine levels of recall after stopping the supplement?
Last three nights while trying to fall asleep and not being able to I experienced symptoms that I felt would be conducive to learning how to WILD. Buzzing in the head, auditory hallucinations (but not much visual), a feeling of dropping. Last night I tried to WILD after doing a round of 61 points then some spinal breathing. I started counting very softly and interestingly I experienced a restriction in my ability to breathe that I think is associated with REM atonia. I wasn’t successfully in riding it to sleep though and I rose back to full consciousness. Will keep practicing however.
Buzzing is a fascinating one. I’ve only experienced this a few times while trying WILDs but every time I got far to excited and woke myself up too much to fall asleep. The feeling is pretty incredible, hard not to get excited experiencing this one.
With auditory hallucinations they have only happen for me while re-entering a dream or waking up from a dream so I can’t give any advice as far as that goes.
But the feeling of falling is 100% you reaching the wake to dream transition. It can feel like you fell through your bed, flew through the roof or got pulled in any direction. I’ve even had one time where it felt like I was falling in a spiral.
When you have this feeling meditation is not as important, just try to stay relaxed. I’ve noticed when I reach this state my mind usually becomes almost as awake as normal waking life, if you stay with the falling feeling and relax during it you will have a dreamscape form around you. When this happens to me I enjoy landing on one knee with 1 hand on the ground like a superhero .
I’m still not there. Last night I recorded about 1/2 of 2 of my dreams. I remember little bits about my dreams later in the day which is how I know I’m not remembering the full dream. While I was taking galantamine I averaged 4 a night. If I had less then 4 it was unusual. Also something interesting is I’ve only had 1 lucid dream since I stopped taking it in the span of 2 weeks. I’m going to wait atleast a month to update my post fully but the differences between taking it and not has been very noticable.
I have had them on and off during my life. Often my LDs and OBEs are a kind of blend or combination of each other, one turning into the other. I think they r practically the same thing because there is the observer element, awakening into the state and the sense of cognizant experimentation. It can become hard to define which is which. LD seems to manifest within, OBE appears external. If u begin to study the OBE state in waking reality, the LD begins to take on that form in subsequent lucid states. My experience anyway. Haven’t they been discussed in NC? I don’t recall seeing a mention
There have been a few posts about OBE on NC with opinions falling on both sides of the fence—are they just VERY lucid dreams, or legit astral travel? I’ve never had one that I can recall but I’ve known someone who was quite certain he’s having them all the time and is very believable. Andrew Holececk gets asked about OBEs occasionally in his Q&A Zooms and is non-committal on whether they are truly out of body travels or perhaps a super lucid dream. Some NC posts about them are here, here and here.
I think that might have been part of the reason I was unable to go deeper. I was like “Oh this means I’m close to the dreaming state, I could use this to WILD” and the expectation I think interfered with the process.
It wasn’t pronounced, but it was there. Good to know what to expect. That sounds pretty wild!
Haha, awesome landing. Sounds like something out of a Marvel comic about a superhero that fights people’s nightmares or something.
Ok… I did notice my mind was wide awake so yeah the counting may have not been needed? All the WILD tutorials I’ve read recommend it though. Guess it’s a matter of trying stuff and seeing what works for you.
To further elaborate, I think I was around 20-30 in the count when the possible REM atonia symptoms started and breathing felt a little oppressive. It was around 60 or something when I realized I hadn’t crossed the wake-dream barrier but had floated back up to full consciousness. At that point I gave it up.
I feel like I’m not remembering my dreams fully either. So much details seems to get missed.
Interesting that stopping the galantamine effected the frequency of LDs as well. Or maybe it didn’t, but with reduced recall you are forgetting some of them? How many LDs did you average a month while you were taking the galantamine?
I wonder what the result of doing a reality check during an OBE would be?
I had one OBE experience that I recall, revisiting a place where I had hung out with other college students during the summer but seeing new faces there instead of the people I had known. Later I went to that place again and saw a picture of the people who had spent last summer there, the summer after the one I had been there. I thought I recognized some of the people from my OBE experience. Could have just been kidding myself though.
I feel that the thesis that OBEs are LDs is very likely. During false awakenings our mind reconstructs our bedroom in such a perfect way we are tricked into thinking we are awake. OBEs feel like a similar phenomenon to me. Whether we are able during OBEs to become aware of phenomena in the waking world is something I wonder about. Even if they are dreams, I don’t think that means we should rule out having real access to knowledge in the waking world during OBEs. Maybe there are parts of the dreamscape where the waking world “bleeds” in (or the dreamscape “bleeds out”). I guess that means I’m in the middle of the whole “OBEs as LDs/ OBEs as astral travel” debate.
Had another near lucid dream last night. Interesting that it was the night of the day my meteorite came in the mail. Lucid Talisman should be arriving tomorrow and then I can get started on this new magical approach to dreaming.
I’m finding myself much more relaxed now about the whole becoming lucid thing. It will come when it needs to come.
I have read and heard that buzzing and intense shaking can occur right before entering an OBE.
That is how I had mine come to me last year, after over 90 days of focusing on it, an event threw off my schedule and I was unable to journal, it also cut into my sleep time, so I totaled about 4 hours of sleep in 48 hours. On the 3rd day, when I got back home I had a short LD.
It will come when you are ready for it to come. What I think is more important is devoloping the daily habits of reality checks religiously. That way when they start to precipitate, they will begin to do so consistently, not just one and done.
I recently bought a buzzing electronic watch from Amazon for $20, you can set 10 daily alarms on it and it buzzes discretely on your wrist. In 3 weeks of using that and testing out the nose pinch reality check I had 2 dreams last week where I breifly became lucid doing the nose pinch. Other skilled lucid dreamers have said it is a reality check they have the most success with. I was shocked by how quickly it integrated into my dream life, with just 10 daily alarms, and a few random autonomous RCs when something strange happened.
Some galantamine every once in a while may really help too, it really helped me increase my dream recall and journaling.
First lucid dream last night. Was only semi-lucid. I was in the middle of a street with two other people and something made me do a reality check. The fingers through the hand reality checked failed but I followed it up with a nose pinch and that worked. There was no excitement, just a realization that I was dreaming. I then tried the fingers through the hand check again to confirm that it didn’t work, and it indeed did not work. I think I was only semi lucid. I followed the plot of the dream and walked up to this building with my companions. While doing this I did some mental reality check- what’s why address and would I be here in waking life? The first one failed too… but the second one worked. Anyways we start climbing this building and somewhere during the climb I think I fell out of lucidity. The building became a chest of drawers and I was using the drawers- some of which were pulled out- to climb. At one point I almost fell but saved myself at the last minute by grabbing onto the building. When we make it to the top there are these large lightweight objects like packing peanuts but much larger on the top of the building. We proceed to sweep them off the roof of the building onto the ground below. The ground below has morphed into the carpet in my bedroom, and now we are trying to cover the entire floor in packing peanuts, which are now their regular size. Someone I know from work is on the floor among all the packing peanuts.
In the lead up to the lucid dream I had taken a break for two days from reality checks and dreaming journaling. Not for any particular purpose, I just needed a break. I did have in the back of my head though Ryan Hurd’s advice to focus intently on becoming lucid for a week or two and then take a break, and that lucid dream often show up during the break period. I wasn’t trying to directly induce a lucid dream by taking a break though.
I’m seeing that I need to focus my intention for lucid dreams next time around. I didn’t really do much with my lucidity this time around I think because my intention so far has just to become lucid.
Going forward I’ll focus on the nose pinch for my physical reality check and find a new mental reality check to test out, as remembering my address apparently came easy to me in my dream.
That is really awesome to hear. I have yet to have the nose pinch fail as a reality check, but the finger through the hand has failed me every time I have tried it.
Something similar happened to me, had to make a trip on short notice, forgot my dream journal, and for 2 days averaged about 2 hours of sleep per night. When I got back home on day 3 I had a LD.
Very glad to hear the work is starting to pay off. You achieved it far faster than I did, sounds like you may be a natural at it.
Hi everyone. Returning to this community. Completely stopped illusory form/ lucid dreaming practice in April last year soon after I had my first lucid dream. Stopped going to the meetings and drifted away from the community. Meant to keep up on it by myself I think but then one day I just decided to drop it all. But now it seems the universe is calling me back to these practices. Human births are precious and these are some powerful teachings. Want to take advantage of them while I have the opportunity. Even if I don’t make much progress during this life, I’ll plant some good seeds for my next life.
I’ll try to post here occasionally about my progress. Pretty much starting from the bottom again. Just started a dream journal again about a week ago.
Its not how many times you fall of the horse, but how many times you get riding again.
Glad to see you are back exploring the trails.
You were missed
The power of Sangha is a truly remarkable thing. Its been said it has the power to amplify things.
I found a bible gem around Christmas last year, and I am very curious your thoughts on it. It was my first time stumbling across it. If it is of interest to you, and you have the time to take a look at it, I would be very curious to know your thoughts. (Will tag you in it. )
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Sounds like something out of a Marvel comic about a superhero that fights people’s nightmares or something.
