# Lucid Dreaming > DV Academy > Current Courses > Intro Class >  >  Sakata Gintoki's Workbook

## Ginsan

Hello, I am Sakata Gintoki, a respectful way to call me is Gin-san and this is my workbook.
I want to start in this intro class because I have been aware of LDs and trying to get them for a long time but it seems I haven't tried hard enough by far. Once I get a solid grip on things, I will take stabilization and dream control lessons. 

Some info:
- First thing I do when I wake up is grab my phone which is always within grabbing range and write my dream down, then later on when I feel like it I post it in my dream journal here on DV along with some thoughts on it
- I will count and report my amount of reality checks and how often I checked

*Reality Checks:*
Calculating, test superpowers, throw things up and down to test gravity, examine electronics, read things, look at the time, count fingers, look around for unusual things

*Dream Signs:*
Fights, being with people I haven't seen in a long time/old friends, village in Turkey, pretty gals

*Short-Term Goals:*
- Wake up naturally several times throughout the night
- Have 7 lucid dreams a week
- Meditate for a few minutes 3 times a day
- Get a stunning view
- Explore the dream world and meet interesting people/beings

*Long-Term Goals:*
- Have a magical world I can keep going back to, full of dragons and other mythical beasts, warriors and sorcerers.
- Have good access to and control with my LD control chamber

*Lucid/Dream Recall History:*
I have been lucid dreaming with poor ability about once a month for at least the last 5 years. 2 Years ago I was journaling with paper and pen and I had better recall and more lucid dreams than I do now. Right now I barely remember about 1 or 2 fragmented dreams every morning and lucid dream about 1 or 2 times a week.

*Current Technique:*
DILD (the lazy technique  :tongue2: )
And meditation

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## Ginsan

I just meditated counting 100 breaths, it's 2:30AM and I read through all my DJ entries on my phone and on most on DV. I will fall asleep in about 15 minutes. My phone said it was 8 PM  about 30 mins ago, I was confused for a tiny moment but RCed even though I knew it was because I removed the battery earlier this day. I RCed by checking the content of my phone.

EDIT:
I just realized I have a driving lesson at 11.30AM so I will have to put my hopes for becoming lucid tonight into WBTBs. I really hope I will wake up, I will use auto-suggestions: "When the alarm goes off, I wake up and record my lucid dream". My first and hopefully not my last alarm clock is set at 8AM

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## Ginsan

Yesterday I stopped to reality check 3 times and did about 4 or 5 reality checks, today I did none. I meditated this morning and yesterday morning for about 5-10 minutes.

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## Ginsan

I just started practicing awareness, did 3 rounds of reality checks. I meditated for a few minutes because I realized I was getting sleepy and sleepiness reduces awareness.

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## Ginsan

Now, if I remember correctly, I am getting lucid once or twice a night for the last 3 or 4 days. I don't know why, I really stopped trying. Only thing I do is record my dreams, I stopped meditating and reality checking. I do sleep a lot, like 9 or 10 hours a day and as I fall asleep I hope for lucidity and do some autosuggesting. I don't feel like journalling them but I will, some day  :tongue2:   One problem though: the lucid dreams are pretty short, not very vivid, I am not really aware like I am in waking life and I can't do much. But I don't really care, as long as I get lucid. What seems to help is drinking a lot of water because it wakes me up to remember and journal it in my phone. It really annoying and it pisses me off to wake up with my other brain down there telling me to rush to the bathroom, but it seems to help so I will keep doing it. I don't know if it has anything to do with it but I got my violin last friday and since then my lucidity increased greatly.

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## NyxCC

That's great, congrats! I guess the violin practices may help too, you probably are in a clear focused state of mind when playing - quite similar to meditation!  ::D:

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## Ginsan

Yeah that is almost correct. Having a violin does put me a in a clearer more focused state of mind, but I can guarantee you doesn't happen _while playing a piece_. I suck way too hard to have that kind of indulgence in the things I play. But in order to play elegantly I practice and I have to practice very wisely and in a focused way, analyzing everything that happens. Also this prevents me from wasting my time surfing Youtube and wasting my time and watching porn all day long, so it prevents me from putting myself in a state of mind where I have low or pretty much no awareness. Though I do get a clear clutterless state of mind when listening to a violin master playing something.

One question: are we assigned dream guides? If so, I assume you are my dream guide since you 'like' and write in my workbook. Or do you work as a team and comment on everybody's workbooks when you see something to comment on?

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## NyxCC

There's no allocation system.  :tongue2:  We periodically browse and comment on workbooks, offer advice as needed and answer Qs. If you have Qs you can ask them in the workbook or the http://www.dreamviews.com/intro-clas...o-class-q.html thread. Feel free to address a specific guide in your question or contact them if you want to be answered by a specific person.

Best of luck with your practices!  :smiley:

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## Ginsan

Today I got 10 sweet hours of sleep and had a nice long lucid  ::D:   Near the end I even did a weather change! My first weather change :Bliss:   I also tried to achieve stabillization and clarity by trying to increase my awareness. I also focused on certain things for about 10 seconds each. It seemed to work, but then 2 DCs attacked me, one of them was big and strong and turned into The Hulk, I couldn't hurt him at all. Now I'm going to read some stuff and write down some stuff in my notebook about stabillization and hopefully the next time I get lucid I can start practicing  :smiley: 

I still continue journalling all my dreams on my phone right after waking up but for some reason I really don't feel like putting it all on DV. I don't know, maybe if a dry spell slaps my ass I will feel like doing it again  ::chuckle::

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## Ginsan

My next dream goal:

*Sit down and do nothing!!*
Yeah, next time I'm just gonna do that because I am sick and tired of lame quality lucid dreams and want to get to the real deal as soon as possible  :Mad: 

EDIT: Sit down and just look around, notice everything around me and feel at home in my dream body. Or just walk around and observe the dream. Instead of going out and trying to do all kinds of crazy things, first I have to find my way to prolong the dream and increase stabillity.

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## Ginsan

I had a cool non lucid fight last night, after that a very long and good sex dream  ::D:   I also remembered to focus on certain objects for stabilization. I forgot to sit down and do nothing. Lately I haven't been thinking of LDing much, so that must be why I didn't think about it. I'm still happy with the night though  :smiley:

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## Ginsan

Something funny happened this morning in my dream. A friend of me and I were eating berries, when we were bored or had enough berries he asked alright what to do now? I said, well go back (to some place I don't know, maybe his shop or back home..). I said go back ofcourse, where else are we going to go. Unless this is a dream we can't go anywhere else. He said is this a dream? I said nah this can't be a dream.. The dream ended around that time.

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## Ginsan

This morning I had a tiny moment of lucidity at the last 5 to 10 seconds of my 10 hour sleep. Today, I just read a transformation guide and a trick to induce lucidity. You just spell L-U-C-I-D over and over when falling asleep, I'll try that out and I will do some reality checks too. I haven't been lucid dreaming for the past week, so I have to start trying a little harder.

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## Ginsan

I totally forgot to spell myself into lucidity. I got into a downloading rage and didn't stop until 6AM in the morning o.0

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## Ginsan

Damn it's been about 6 weeks since I've had some dream progress..

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## Ginsan

For the past few weeks my night life has been getting more and more exciting  ::hump::  ::hump:: 
Just kidding  :tongue2:   The only thing I've been humping is my own hand  :Big laugh: 
About 2 weeks ago I had the most amazing dream ever, I had good awareness and it was vivid, so vivid that in my memory it has even better graphics than in real life. I'm not kidding! The view was more amazing and colorful than anything I have ever seen in real life. I was flying high above the clouds and also in something like this:

*Spoiler* for _image link_: 



https://www.google.nl/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja  &uact=8&ved=0CAcQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia  .org%2Fwiki%2FGrand_Canyon&ei=A73BVJX9HIuuUYPWgNgJ  &bvm=bv.84349003,d.d24&psig=AFQjCNGyCCEYC3vNlgUrGK  Qgk62n3Lebag&ust=1422069376643801



In between rocky mountains. But it had brighter colors and there were trees and grass and green stuff on the mountains, below me was a big city or village and I was flying over it. More importantly, the flying had an amazing feeling to it because I could feel the wind for the first time ever. I also went really high, way above the mountains.. I landed somewhere in a village, met a guy and a girl, we were instantly best friends. I ate some really really delicious fruit, it was more tasty than anything I had eaten in real life, even though my mom is an awesome cook! We got charged by a giant unicorn so we went on some vehicle and rose off, running away from the mystical horse but we were on an island in the air apparently because we were about to reach the edge. I told them to hang on to my legs and that I could fly, I had a hard time flying with 2 people on me so we didn't get very far. Eventually we started falling down in between rocky mountains and we reached a place that was portruding from the mountain. There were people sitting there and there was a shop selling food and drinks, the people sitting there saw us flying in and helped us getting on the ridge. For some reason, maybe because of the heavy wind, we were still flying back and forth so they used rope to tie us down. Once we weren't moving anymore the removed the rope and we sat there. We learned they had magic powers like me, that's why I could fly. I was asking someone to teach me how to fly but he didn't want to. We sat around some, me and the guy and girl hugged and there the dream ended.

Best flying expierience ever, best food ever (including real life) and best friendship ever, best view ever (including real life), which is why this was my best dream ever. The thing I most often do is sex and after that flying. This dream made me realize that the most fun things in dreams go in this order 1) closeness to dream characters, hugging, kissing, cuddling, just hanging around 2) flying 3) sex. Because of this realization I still had lots of girls in my dreams but it was more about kissing and cuddling than about sex, which is awesome  :smiley:   The last couple of weeks I have been meditating once first thing in the morning and once before bed, each session taking about 20-30 minutes. This is probably what is causing this slow but really steady progress. I feel like if I keep going like this, remembering 2-3 dreams and at least 1 moment of lucidity every night is pretty likely :grin:  I think I will keep meditating, because I like it. It is extremely powerful for clearing my mind, organizing my thoughts, summarizing the day, getting myself ready for bed. By silencing, clearing and organizing my mind like this I can really forget everything and focus on just dreaming. I think I am pretty close to being addicted to meditation because if I don't, the thoughts swirling in my head prevent me from even diving into a book, I couldn't possibly sleep like this. I feel like I have to meditate at night, in the morning it's more discipline though. I think progress on the violin would also be much slower if I didn't meditate, because this way I can review the things I have learned and confirm them once more in my head. So that the next day I can continue where I was withouth having to trace back my progress. If dreaming progress keeps going like this I will keep posting here. So teachers, I'm counting on you!

And AstralMango, hi  :tongue2:

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## Ginsan

Yesterday night I meditated 42 minutes and this morning 30. I'm looking forward to tonight's dream

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## NyxCC

Ginsan! That sounds like a really awesome dream. I can absolutely understand it is so inspiring.  :smiley: 

Well done keeping up with the meditation practice so often. Looking forward to reading about more such awesome dreams and lds in the future!  ::D:

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## Ginsan

Thanks, I hope I can have more of these dreams to excite you with  ::lol::

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## Ginsan

I just did today's meditation. I tried to think a little bit about lucid dreaming during the meditation. "when you notice something strange, know that you are dreaming, don't forget to anchor yourself, observe, examine, touch, smell the dream. Notice how lifelike it is." I said things like that. I also just focused on the 'feeling' of a LD. I feel like LDs have a special feeling to them, I cant describe it but they have a clearly different feeling from them than real life. I hope that by meditating like this I will improve my awareness in LDs significantly. Good night

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## NyxCC

> I feel like LDs have a special feeling to them, I cant describe it but they have a clearly different feeling from them than real life. I hope that by meditating like this I will improve my awareness



You are right! Lds do feel differently. Sometimes everything can look normal as in waking life but there is this special feeling that one can only relate to dreams. I remember Kingyoshi also mentioned this as one of the 'areas' so to speak that develop as you ld more. No need to rc, you just know. 

Did you see the latest research by the way? It shows a relationship between mindfulness (they called it people who are better at thought monitoring) and lucidity:

http://www.dreamviews.com/research/1...-dreamers.html

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## Ginsan

This morning I had a pretty long lucid dream, in my memory it feels like 15-20 minutes. Which is pretty good for me. But I didn't have the awareness of waking life. I kind of knew I could do more than normal. Next time I should remember to anchor the dream and increase my awareness. I think the way to do that is by slowing down, not getting excited and getting really observant. Looking around, thinking about what I could do, what I wanted to do, how to not waste the dream, feeling stuff, tasting stuff. Just examining the dream and not trying to enjoy it. I am going to meditate after this post and I'm going to try and put this idea of being observant in my head. I want to spend some serious time to learn to anchor my dream, I want to have a clear mind and be confident that my awareness won't fade away and that the dream will last at least 30 minutes in perceived time. 

Once I have that foundation I can really start doing crazy stuff. Like transforming! Maaaan, is there anything better than a solid transformation? I am amazed that the brain is even capable of simulating such detailed and convincing transformations. I'm talking about growing limbs, fur, wings. I read about somebody becoming a robot, he could feel the oil gushing through his body. Normally I fly with my body shaped as a pencil, moving through the air. It feels like I have a very unpredictable engine and barely a way to steer, moving through antigravity, I never felt real gravity. Only once or twice did I feel wind but it is still so much weaker than what a bird feels. I want to feel gravity, wind, get lifted a little bit with each flap of my wings, falling if I don't, diving down, gliding by stretching my wings... Imagine shapeshifting into a hawk, soaring across the sky, diving down to catch a fish, feeling splatters of water as you struggle to go up into the air, barely staying above the surface of the water for a few seconds with a fish in your claws. I can only barely imagine this feeling, that's why I want it so badly. I bet it would feel extremely liberating to not be in this clumsy body, but in the body of a bird or cat. Moving elegantly and beautifully.. This will be my guide Transformation guide

Once I have that solid foundation I can try out so much awesome stuff. I would do all the monthly challenges on the day they come out, then the yearly challenges. When I'm done with those I will do the yearly challenges of all the previous years. I might make a request thread. Let people request things which I will then perform in a dream and tell them what it was like  :tongue2:   NyxCC, pray for me that my progress remains steady = D


Alright, time for meditation


PS: I'll probably also practice to get a strong DEILD skill, which I think would be very useful in prolonging total ld time

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## Ginsan

I have just joined Sensei's competition, this is getting exciting! The last 2 competitions were a year ago and they motivated me immensely and were loads of fun = D

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## Ginsan

I didn't meditate this morning, just like last morning and I didn't have anything interesting in my dreams, I barely even remembered them and I had no moment of lucidity. I have just meditated and I remembered this video



So I did what he said. I made my breathing rythmical, smooth and even. Then I felt a much more intense kind of clarity and silence than usual. That simple trick made a giant difference. I breathed big and deep through my mouth, filling my lungs up without feeling uncomfortable. I'm going to meditate like this from now on.

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## NyxCC

Congrats on the long ld, Ginsan! You seem to be making awesome progress, keep it up! Your meditation sessions are surely of great help.  ::D:

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## Ginsan

Without meditating my ld progress would be reduced to nothing  :tongue2:   This morning I didn't even remember a dream. But that's normal, this lucid dreaming business is ethereal and inconsistent like that. Also I like how you respond to everything I put in here, it makes me feel like I am not dumping these posts into an empty thread, somebody is actually following everything = D

I also decided to read Naiya's (pretty long) DILD & WILD Secrets and after that I am going to read Sageous' Q&A thread while making notes on a piece of paper. I don't promise to read all of Sageous' thread because last time I checked it was around 10 pages

EDIT: I didn't mention my most effective ld technique BY FAR. Which is that I sleep at least 9 hours a day, sometimes up to 10. Rarely 8.5 hours = D  I have such a lazy and easy going life that I can do that. Before sleeping I am usually lying in bed for about an hour and 1 hour after waking up, often thinking about my dream. I think this is one of the most important thing to living a happy life. When I get a full-time job I am going to do anything possible in order to have at least an hour more time in bed than I need for sleeping. Even if this inhibits my social life, violin practice or any other hobbies. It's worrying how many people say things like this: "I know I should be getting 7 hours of sleep a night but I am just too busy, I often get around 5 or 6 hours". What? 7 hours? Are you kidding? If I got 7 hours a day my personality would take a 180 degree turn within a week! If I had to operate on 8 hours a day that sleep would have to be high quality sleep and I would have to meditate at least 30 minutes a day. I really don't understand what's going through people's heads when they comprimise sleep for any other part of life.

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## NyxCC

^^ Me neither. One even more terrifying thing I read is some scientists are actually trying to reduce our sleep even more (by cutting out _unnecessary_?! parts - this was mentioned in scientific magazine a while ago by the way, yikes!) so that we can work longer. Luckily for us all, they haven't succeeded yet. If anything, we need to be sleepying more!  :Off to Bed:

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## Ginsan

I know about that, but saying "scientists are actually trying to reduce our sleep even more (by cutting out unnecessary?! parts" makes it sound like some kind of evil plot  :tongue2:   I don't know how it started and you can do some Googling if you are interested, it's called polyphasic sleep. The most extreme version is called the übermensch and you have a 20-minute nap every 4 hours. 6 Naps in total so just 2 hours of sleep a day, _that is the only sleep you get_. There are bloggers doing it and reporting on their expieriences. I read that this idea of napping a few times during the day to sleep less but still function originated from the millitary where they were forced to use such methods under extreme circumstances. There are many variations and Wikipedia has some good info. Being born in a healthy body is the greatest luxury a human can have and you shouldn't screw with the natural processes. If you use just a tiny fraction of this beautiful machine between your ears anyobody should know that living like this is absolutely useless unless you want to ruin your health and your life, in which case I highly recommend this method xD


*Spoiler* for _rant_: 



Here's a rant, it's good to rant once in a while..
I think it's ridiculous for people to think that this is healthy.. Sleeping less and being more productive by using some crazy new method, are you kidding me? The human body is an incredibly complex machine, a single muscle fiber, a single cell has so many profound details and complexities which are quite beautiful to me. Even what I learned in biology class which barely scratched the surface of this complexity makes me realize this. And the brain? Did you know that the brain contains about 80 billion neurons, a single neuron having 1.000 to 10.000 connections or "cables" to other neurons? Every cable has a different strength, depending on how often it is used. In a ted talk I heard that not a single neuron is the same. Also that the computing power of a single neuron is roughly equal to the computing power of an average laptop. Can you even imagine this complexity? I can't, I can only let my jaw drop by thinking about it. Sometimes, when washing my hands I look at it and notice all the movement in my body, from my fingertips to my knuckles, the inside of my hand, the wrist joint, forearm, elbow, upper arm, shoulderblades, I even feel the involvement of my lower back muscles, abs, obligues. All moving dynamically and smoothly, perfectly coördinated, all just to wash your hands, to rub your hands over one another. There are so many tiny muscle fibers which are filled with tiny little endings of cables coming from the nervous system, each little ending capable of putting out electrical signals of varying degrees of strength and length of time, each tiny little muscle fiber has to be moved in such a way that it enables the movement of a certain body part in a certain direction, but this is not enough, because the body parts are moving and therefor the movement is in a slightly different speed, angle and strength for fraction of a second. To coördinate this kind of movement with so many body parts moving and acting at the same time is quite an unbelievable process to me. But this is not everything, because we are not even thinking about how to wash our hands, we are seeing in the mirror how we look, thinking thoughts, feeling the soap and the water, processing emotions. It's a shame that some people don't seem to appreciate this beauty. Getting caught up in things like what other people might think and (more importantly) say about you, pride, money, it's so silly. Just appreciate and enjoy the simple joys in life, damn it! Take a deep breath, do some meditation, have some good food, hear some violin music  :tongue2: , share some laughs and watch some silly videos on Youtube..




Sleep provides not only rest for the whole body, but it's the _only_ time the brian ever gets real rest, though meditation seems to do a great job too. This amazing machine needs to function optimally!! To play with something as profound as sleep is ridiculous. No matter how poor I get or how little time I have for the rest of life, taking 10 hours out of my day to prepare for sleep, sleep, and slowly wake up from sleep will be the last luxury I'll give up.
Here is an interesting video, it explains the cleansing process that takes place during sleep. 


I'm ashamed to admit it, but I am quite sleepy right now and should have gone to bed about 3-4 hours earlier. And even though I can sleep all day and will get 9-10 hours of sleep, somehow my quality of sleep seems to get reduced if I am still sleeping after about 10AM.

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## NyxCC

Lol! I was being sarcastic, but really the way it was written in the article didn't make it sound very appealing. I wonder if I still have that particular magazine around. It has been like 3-4 years. Here is one related article by the way. In this one, some people have a special genetic mutation that allows them to sleep less. 

Rare Genetic Mutation Lets Some People Function with Less Sleep - Scientific American

I have heard about those polyphasic schedules, but am not a big fan of them either. Adding naps to normal sleep, yes, but reducing sleep? Not my piece of cake. Sleep is way too important to play around with it. And there's even no need for complicated medical tests to prove such crazy schedules are not healthy - one look in the mirror is enough.  :tongue2:

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## Ginsan

You said it!

It's an interesting article. This is why I love science so much. Although their main interest is probably to satisfy their endless curiosity about the world, these people solve serious problems! All this brain research will eventually provide a cure for so many terrible mental diseases.

"Fu says helping people sleep a little less while maintaining their health and well-being is her ultimate dream." This is really silly, but maybe she meant it more as a milestone for knowledge than as an actual thing she wanted to do.

I didn't get lucid and onnly had some dream fragments. I promise right here right now that I'm going to do at least reality checks more reality checks to get progress.

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## Ginsan

The last time I remember checking the clock was about 12 in the afternoon and I woke up at 3AM. Maybe it was not 12 but 14PM? I don't know but I do know I slept a lot! The dreams were filled with friends and family because I was feeling lonely yesterday and I had a girlfriend in 1 dream. I remembered 4 dreams. Once when I was about to order something, I remembered being 75 euro's in the red on my bank and I thought "I hope the power of expectation works and puts some money in my wallet". It worked and I had a 10 euro bill. The thought of lucidity never popped up  :tongue2:   Beside that, everything was completely nonlucid.

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## Ginsan

I read somewhere that sleep weakens the emotional strength of things in your life, positive and negative. That might be why whenever I'm feeling really lonely and longing I get dreams where I am always doing stuff with a group of friends/family. I was with a group of at least 5 people in 3 dreams and in 1 dream I started out alone and soon met my violin teacher and sat down with her at a restaurant. It felt nice and really helps deal with it, but I still wish I was lucid so I could enjoy it a little bit more.

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## Ginsan

The duration of my meditation depends on how clear my mind is. Apparentely my mind this morning was really foggy because I took an hour and 25 minutes.. Damn. I didn't remember any dreams either. Right now I am more lost and at the same time more determined than I've ever been in my entire life.

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## NyxCC

Taking longer to meditate isn't that bad per se, if you manage to find the time, that is. Every session is unique and if not anything else, you have gained by being relaxed for longer and also are always training how to quiet down your mind. You know it takes a lifetime even for zen monks.  :wink2:

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## Ginsan

Yes ofcourse, and I do have enough time, but I was just surprised to find out how unclear my mind was.

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## Ginsan

I think I am expieriencing mild emotional trauma. It's a bit long but please bear with me. I think it really is a trauma and needs to be dealt with because I am really jumpy, any unexpected sound or just ssing someone on the street gives me that strange feeling in my belly and my heart rate increases.

A few days ago I was playing a game on Armorgames called Upgrade Complete and you had to upgrade everything, game graphics, sound, the logo of the game, loading speed, all kinds of things. There was also an upgrade called "increase heart rate", I thought it was ridiculous and clicked. About 5 seconds later some stupid face popped up, screaming sound blasting through my headphones and the colors of the stupid face were rapidly changing, a typical jumpscare. I gasped slightly, jerked the stool backwards (it has weels so it didn't fall) and turned right to my father who was watching tv, my face in shock and I was unable to speak for about 3-4 seconds. That was I think 3-4 days ago.

This morning was a little more intense. That jumpscare from the game was the first thing leading to it. The second thing was that I was staying up pretty late, while I normally went to bed around 11PM, I was awake until 6AM this morning. Also, there is this corner of the furniture that I kept noticing that looked very very much like part of a horror movie. Idiot that I am, I realized I should just put a pillow in front of it at about 5AM  :tongue2:   So just being sleepy makes me more jumpy, which made that furniture cornor seem scarier and the effect of the game jumpscare was still not completely gone. So I go to bed finally at 6Am. But the problem is I have to get up again at 8AM to go to school. I fall asleep at about 6.30AM I think. But I really don't give a damn about school and just want to sleep, but my mom doesn't agree with that AT ALL and I always make her mad every single monday morning for arriving late at school. At about 8AM my alarm went off and I remember telling my mom "okay okay I'm getting out of bed". But then I thought screw that, sleep is more important so I just slept. Then at about 9AM she banged on the door twice and _really loud_! That banging on the door would have been enough to keep me from going back to sleep even though I am horrible at resisting sleep and I had only slept about 2.5 hours, that's how scared I got just by the banging. I jolted awake. Then she aggressively opens the door and rushes towards my bed (which is about 4-5 steps from the door) in order to pull the curtains away. But I had just been jolted by the banging noise and looked at the door trying to figure out what happened *I have been getting chills since I started typing this*, my mindstate more asleep than awake and it's dark because I have a rolling shutter. See it from my point of view: extremely loud banging, I wake up "ahh!! what's that?" *slightly shocked/in fear*, then this dark figure, after opening the door hard, comes rushing towards my bed (in order to pull away the curtains and get me out of bed) and I just start making this sound for about 3 seconds that my brother describes as if I was expressing pure fear "uheaweawawhaheuawha", something like that. Then my mom apoligizes and opens the rolling shutter and I am shaking in fear for the next few minutes trying to understand what the hell just happened. To me, it felt like I was screaming as loud as I could for 10 seconds but my brother said it was about 3 seconds, I was not loud and not screaming, I was just making weird noises that he described as expressing pure fear.

The event in itself is already quite scary but I think the combination of the jumpscare game, being sleepless and the scary furniture put me in a more vulnurable state. I haven't been meditating the past few days and I'll start again. I googled emotional trauma and it says that emotional trauma is not an event but an emotional response and the constant replaying in your head of the event. Meditation apparently can bring suppressed negative emotion to the surface which is obviously necessary if I want to get released of this. It also said the the quicker you begin treatment the easier it will be to get cured.

I am reading this now to understand what to do. 25 techniques for treating emotional trauma and PTSD | Living Well NLP


I want to say one thing. I do realize that there are things that people have gone through and still go through that are so much scarier than this. Things like mental torture, being raped (obviously), being abducted/attacked by something that overpowers you, natural disasters, child abuse by the parents and that is maybe the most horrible one because children feel emotions very strongly and are very timid and I can't possible imagine what a child feels when being abused by parents. This scare I expierienced is absolutely nothing compared to the horrible things some people have gone through and probably right now people are expieriencing horrible things, but it doesn't mean that I should ignore what happened this morning. I hate this jumpy/fearful state of mind of mine right now and want to get rid of it as quickly as possible. I feel like writing this already helped a great deal and I'll write some more tomorrow about this. Right now I'm going to bed, meditate and then sleep. I really hope I won't get any nightmares.


EDIT: I'll also keep some kind of light so that I won't have to wake up into complete darkness. Right now I don't even care about getting enough sleep, I just want to shed off this fear

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## NyxCC

Hey Ginsan, seems like you've been through very stressful couple of days. 

I think one part of dealing with this problem would be to just get more sleep. I know from experience that when people don't get much sleep they are even more jumpy. On top of that, being woken up right after falling asleep or in the earlier REM periods can be very stressful. So, my first advice on this would be to get more sleep. Then, if possible try not to dwell on it too much, it was a nasty set of circumstances, but it is fully within your power to stop going down this stressful spiral by not assigning this event as much importance. This is the best way to nip it in the bud. Hope that helps!

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## Ginsan

You're right I have always known I am much more jumpy when I am sleepy. Sleeping early also reduces the time I am alone at night which is basically "jumpy time", because my parents and brother sleep early. Yesterday I slept with the light of the hallway turned on and the door slightly opened and the rolling shutter open completely. Which made my room not light enough to read a book, but if I had pictures I would easily see the pictures. Usually my room is completely dark, door shut and after my eyes get used to the darkness it's still almost completely dark. I the tiniest bit of light when trying to sleep or waking up but last night I was just too scared to sleep in darkness. I knew that I would sleep at least 4-5 hours in full sunlight but I just couldn't shut the lights. I even kept the light on of my own room for about 30 minutes before I was calmed down enough to shut the light of my room. I did sleep for about 10-11 hours, though it didn't make up for the bad quality of the sleep. It's almost 2AM now and I am just going to listen to some music to calm me down (just because it's late and I am sleepy and alone I get pretty jumpy) and I'll go to sleep. I won't go easy on myself tonight and I will shut all lights and just endure the initial fear, it was acceptable (imo) yesterday but tonight I really need optimal sleep.

I read the website and it appears to be written by somebody who's profession is to deal with traumas or at least part of his profession. It basically boiled down to normalizing the expierience. I have to assure myself that the event in itself is not very special or extremely horrifying or scary, it was just surprising. An unfortunate combination of many surprising things at the same time. Every time I remember it I shouldn't say to myself "yeah that was really scary", because thinking that over and over again only confirms it and makes it worse and worse. I have to say "I was really surprised, the knocking on the door followed by her rushing towards me was a really amazing surprise". Not lying to myself, but thinking about it and describing it not as a scary event/memory but as a surprising and unfortunate one. I think that by giving it a softer, less emotional, more normal/rational narration every time I think about it, so telling myself it's not _that_ scary, it's just an unfortunate event, I can make myself deeply believe it. I already know it on a superficial level, when I think about it, but by continuing this way of thinking and narrating I think I can get rid of the negative emotions completely. And getting more sleep (and earlier) are probably even more important and not dwelling on it is also important.

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## Ginsan

I slept in complete darkness. I was a little scared when I first got in bed, but then I took my phone and browsed sexy pictures with google images and I my libido completely overpowered my fear  :tongue2:   Eventually I relaxed and was able to sleep xD

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## NyxCC

Happy to hear you are doing better, Ginsan!  :smiley: 

The advice from the website and your own conclusions are really good. I think this could be applied to a number of situtions too, so I find it very useful.  ::goodjob2::

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## Ginsan

There is also one more important thing I forgot to mention and that is to create happy memories in my bedroom. That scare seemed to have overpowered previous memories of my room (which are positive) and I remember the scary moment every time I enter my room so in order to get rid of that I think I have to (continue to) create happy memories. By blasting classical music through my cd player while reading my favorite comic book, which I do quite often including this morning. Watching sexy pictures  :tongue2:   And playing on my violin. My bedroom is for me the most pleasant place in the world and I feel safer in my bedroom than probably anywhere else and it's ridiculous to feel otherwise. My beautiful violin is there, my safe and warm bed, my hilarious comic books and a few normal books, about 30 music cds filled with some of my most beloved recordings. If everything in my room were to be destroyed right now my soul would lose almost everything that makes it come alive.

I was wondering how old you are NyxCC because I can't tell from your posts. As far as I can tell you could be anything from a teenager to in your 40's  :tongue2:

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## Ginsan

I´ve just found that white noise is really good for reducing my jumpiness at night. Normally when it´s completely silent, the tiniest sound obviously can make me jump and I set the volume of the headphones very low because even just talking loud somehow makes me feel uncomfortable. But this increases my sensitivity to sound even more but I just realized that if I just get some white noise I get rid of the silence. And rainymood.com is even better I think because it´s not just white noise, it also makes me feel more relaxed. I think it was a brilliant idea and it immediately reduced my jumpiness and as far as I can tell I feel as comfortable as during the day when my parents are in the same room watching tv  = D

I got the idea by remembering a forum about violinists' neighbours complaining about noise and one of the suggestions was to put a fan in the house of the neighbour.

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## Ginsan

I've been doing RC's the last few days every time I am reminded to do one. I check my hands, write something and look away and back at the writing to see if it's changed, and I check gravity by throwing and catching stuff. When I'm done I tell myself "I am probably not dreaming right now but I don't know for sure and I will stay alert because I still _might_ be dreaming."

I don't even know it this helps with inducing lucidity, but I like to do that because it helps keep a sense of wonder and scepticism. It makes me think just a little extra about the things I see. For example when I am chewing gum, why does it stick a little to my teeth for a fraction of a second and not more. Why does it not fall apart and leave a big sticky mess in my mouth? How the hell is a piece of plastic made? How can a clock work so nearly perfectly? It makes RCing more fun and perhaps that way it helps to become lucid more often.

I am still remembering an average of 2-3 small and fuzzy dreams a night and I am not really getting lucid. I'm also writing most of it in my journal. Maybe this new effort will get me lucid.

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## NyxCC

I like your new approach. It makes sense to focus on this state of not knowing for sure, rather than simply saying no. I think it calls for greater attention and being critical may help catch some details that are off.

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## Ginsan

I got semi-lucid today, but it wasn't much. I just knew in the back of my head that I was in a world where nothing has real consequences and I could take any girl I wanted. But I didn't have any awareness. But just getting lucid is already an amazing thing, most people don't even remember their dreams and get a glimpse of lucidity maybe once a month  :tongue2:   It also only lasted 5-10 minutes

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## NyxCC

Not bad! The girls must have distracted you.  :tongue2:

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## Ginsan

Well you might call it distracted but my reason for lding is mainly girls...

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## NyxCC

In such a case, it may help to combine any girl related thoughts or visualizations with thoughts about dreaming. 

I like the way dolphin approaches dream incubation in his new thread:





> I'll start out by imagining, constantly in between breaths, a woman kissing me on the cheek and saying, "You're dreaming".



http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...30-nights.html

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## Ginsan

I'm going to do this  ::D:

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## Ginsan

The big theme tonight was anxiety. There people chasing me and bullying me all night. I know why, but it's not big deal. No lucidity, that's too bad. But I am still being mindful and RCing so let's hope that tonight will be better.

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## NyxCC

:Sad:  Hope tonight is better. Try not to think of unpleasant things before bed. After joining DV, I finally realized how bad this can sometimes be for the dreams that follow. Not sure if this is the case for you, but it's definitely useful in the long run.

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## Ginsan

I don't remember (even though it was 3 days ago  ::chuckle:: ) but I think the negativity came from argueing with my brother about religion and I just felt incapable for not talking sense into him. But yesterday I found out that it's not all my fault. He said "if you can find ONE mistake in the quran, JUST ONE". I said alright so if I just find one mistake you'll confess and admit it's all bullshit. His face was lit up with pride as if he just made the perfect argument. I thought about the claim that Allah made the heavens and earth in 6 days and I didn't take it seriously, I didn't think it would be so absolutely ridiculous to directly and literally say that in the book. I found it though, it says it as literally and directly as you could imagine. But he still didn't accept it. He said 2 things. 1) Yeah but what do you mean by the earth? We don't know that. 2) Maybe it's not 6 days for us, you know? Maybe it's 6 days for something else.

Then I just said "Stop. Do you really want me to have a sensible argument with somebody who is not for one second doubting that the heavens and earth were made in 6 days?" Then a few minutes later he said he made the planet in 2, mountains and trees in 2 and the heavens in 2 days. What? Do you even realize the scale? 100s of billions of stars in a single galaxy and many of those stars have planets and those have moons going around them, there are 100s of billions of galaxies all containing 100s of billions of stars. 100 Billion that is a 1 with 11 zero's, multiply the 2 you get a number with 22 zero's. He made all the galaxies in 2 days but the earth in 4? Come on, man. My dad also said "You don't know what it means by days." First time I ever felt ashamed to be of the same human race of certain individuals. My mom, dad and brother.

About letting go of negativity, the last few days I am trying to accept reality with everything in it as it is. I'm not trying to exaggerate the good and diminish the bad and I'm trying to be present and not think about memories or the future, just feel the present as it is. It's a bit difficult sometimes, but I am getting better and it gives me a tremendous amount of relief.

I also told him about satellite images and what they show. They can see stars forming, stars exploding, gas and dust clouds clotting together, planets forming all over the universe. He just said that it's not clear what it means by 6 days.

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## NyxCC

:Sad:  Yes, it can be quite difficult to convince people when they hold strong views about something. I try to avoid getting into conversations about things I know we have very conflicting beliefs about. Not very easy but saves a lot of nerves. 





> About letting go of negativity, the last few days I am trying to accept reality with everything in it as it is. I'm not trying to exaggerate the good and diminish the bad and I'm trying to be present and not think about memories or the future, just feel the present as it is. It's a bit difficult sometimes, but I am getting better and it gives me a tremendous amount of relief.



That sounds like a good approach. Wish you more pleasant and calming moments!

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## Ginsan

Thanks. Sam Harris' talks made a big impact on me and he made me realise just how important mindfulness is. I am almost convinced it's the single best way to be truly happy. This morning I realized that my life has been getting sadder and sadder for at least the past 3 years. Every low is lower than the one before and every high is lower than the high before, so there are still highs and lows but on average I am just sliding down. And I really don't like it. I have to find a way to just be happy. Logically I understand that if you have no reason to feel bad, you should just feel happy, but that logic doesn't translate directly into happiness. I think meditation and mindfulness is the way and I really hope I am right. It's a damn shame be as lucky and well off as I am and not be happy, you know? I didn't recall any dreams last night.

It's not all bad, though, my highs from music are greater than ever before. 3 Days ago was in tears while listening to this and when it ended I felt such an intense gratitude for my cd-player that I hugged it for like 5 minutes while the euphoria was still swimming around in my brain  :tongue2:   Yeah I know it sounds ridiculous  ::chuckle::

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## Ginsan

I had some nice lucid action this night. At around 5 PM I got tired and meditated for a few minutes and then I got tired of sitting and decided to lie down and try to grasp the things Sam Harris talked about. He said consciousness is merely the space in which every expierience arises and if you try to look for the looker or find the thinker of thoughts you won't find it. You will find that there is only consciousness, a mental space where everything arises. While doing this I fell asleep and woke up at about 5AM so I had a nice long sleep.

I had 4 lucid dreams. 3 Pretty short ones and 1 pretty long one, I flew in the last 3 of them and was not fully lucid in any of them. But I was more and more aware as the night went on. In the first one I was the least lucid and I don't remember doing anything besides snuggling in bed with my girlfriend  :tongue2:   And the girl had no counterpart in real life. The second dream was a bit shorter than the first and I flew up into some high trees because animals on the ground were trying to eat me, that's all I remember  :tongue2:   In the 3rd dream I was somewhere with a friend and we entered a shop that also sold ice cream, I had no money but wanted ice cream and he didn't give it to me. I stole a box of ice cream and flew away, went up a huge building. I was intimidated by the height and when I looked up I saw two pretty small buildings or castle like constructions that were way up. One of them was almost as high as an airplane would fly. I was curious about going there but I got scared of the height and decided to stay where I was, then it ended. The 4th dream was pretty long, like 30-40 minutes of dream time. It started with a party, then I a flew away and had sex with several different girls, then flew somewhere else and became a dragon protecting people from some evil city that kept breaking apart and moving around, trying to avoid my burning disc attacks. I felt a bit like a dragon even though I didn't see my body because my breath was really hot and I had insane physical strength. While attacking that city I was flying really high and carrying on my foot or tail or something (I don't know how I carried it) a room that was removed from the building so I was pretty strong. Ofcourse I wrote this in my detail in my dj on my phone.

Oh man I love lucid dreaming xD

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## NyxCC

> Logically I understand that if you have no reason to feel bad, you should just feel happy, but that logic doesn't translate directly into happiness. I think meditation and mindfulness is the way and I really hope I am right. It's a damn shame be as lucky and well off as I am and not be happy, you know?



Mindfulness can really help with that. At some point, I started noticing how my inner dialogue would determine the way I feel. It's like I would say to myself "I feel sad today", (or lazy or depressed, etc), and then would agree with this "yes, I do". It's terrible when one realizes one repeats these little thoughts throughout the day and it's this process that keeps us locked up in the same place. But this can be changed - by not repeating these negatives in the first place. I also have an entire philosophy that comes to the rescue - in a nutshell, the world is neither good or bad but just is. There is always a little negative in the positive and positive in the negative. And in the end it's just a matter of interpretation, of focusing on one or the other. Mindfulness helps us realize we have a choice where precisely to focus. 

Congrats on the lds! Sounds like you had a really great time.  ::goodjob::

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## Ginsan

Sam Harris described it as being kidnapped by the most boring person on earth and being forced to repeat the same conversation over and over again  :tongue2:  
I did have a great time and I hope it's the result of mindulness because I'm getting more and more of that! Sometimes I would actually have to use discipline NOT to meditate, and I love it. Just sitting silently and being content with just "being". No thoughts, no emotions, just being. Obviously I can't do this yet, but it gets better and better as I get closer. I love how I can direct my thoughts, it's just like you described, normally you get a thought and then that seems to direct your state of mind. But when you realise that that is just another thought with no real significance it loses significance. The fact that a pieceful, calm, content mind is actually the most basic mental state is quite a blessing. What can be better than that? The closer you get to the most basic, most fundamental state of consciousness, the more peaceful you get = D

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## Ginsan

The last few nights have been pretty boring, no lucidity. But this morning I meditated for 30 minutes in the garden and when I opened my eyes I noticed how colorful and alive everything was, I felt like becoming lucid in a dream. It was a nice reminder of how colorful nature is.

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## Ginsan

Yesterday I reminded myself of the basics of LD mastery, recall, lucid dream anchoring/lengthening, and lucid dream induction. You train recall by recalling  :tongue2:  (journaling) You train anchoring/lengthening by memorizing techniques and practicing it, and you train induction by awareness. Then I got 2 lucid dreams. I was flying in both, and in the last one I remembered to shouted 2 commands, both were something like "CLARITY NOW!!". I know it worked but I don't remember what happened, I just know it worked  :tongue2:   I also had a DMC4 dream, I dream about that a lot lately, I guess I had about 6-7 DMC4 dreams in the past 2 months. I have been watching many gameplay videos lately and in my dream I am always playing the game and doing better combo's than in real life, and it's really awesome. As always, the flying was more like antigravity than real flight. And as always going up was very easy and very fast, controls for left/right/back/forth were pretty bad and going to was almost impossible. But I have a feeling that it's getting more and more intuitive.

Also I have been feeling some guilt towards myself, because I have been in this beginner phase for at least 3 years now and when I consider what kind of crazy dreams I could have been having right now if I had practiced just a little bit more, I get a bit sad  :Sad:   Having said that, I am going to spend some more time and effort to get good at lucid dreaming.

DMC4 is a ps3, xbox360 and PC game. Devil May Cry 4.

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## NyxCC

That's great to hear, Ginsan! Congrats! You should have these ld mastery reviews more often.  ::D:

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## Ginsan

Thanks  :smiley:   I like your quote btw, about the climb.

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## Ginsan

Something I had been noticing for probably very early on, before I knew there was a word for lucid dreaming, I almost always get the best lucid action in the very last dream. It makes sense, because the final REM period is the longest, also the last dream is often the longest dream of the night.

Last night I woke up after about 7 hours of sleep, and I journaled 1 or 2 dreams just to practice my recall and then deleted the memo on my phone, so I don't remember if I got lucid in those 7 hours. Then I slept again for about 2.5 - 3 hours, but I trained that day and I stayed up 3-4 hours longer than usual so it's normal I slept 10 hours. Then I had about 5 minutes of lucidity, I did almost nothing. I looked around in the neighbourhood in houses that might have some pretty girls  :tongue2:   I was only half lucid and wasn't really thinking. But something interesting happened, something I often get but with a twist. Sometimes I am in a grey area between the dream and wakefulness where I am trying to hold on to the dream, but this time it was between one dream and a false awakening (I only realized it was a fa after waking up and thinking about it), but because I was in this gray area, I couldn't shout commands (like clarity now or lucidity now) because I was afraid I might shout in real life  :tongue2:   That was something interesting and I'll do more RCs upon awakening and just lying in bed so maybe I can catch the next false awakening by the balls

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## NyxCC

So, in a way you managed not to wake up, even if it was an FA. Congrats on the ld!  :smiley:

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## Ginsan

Yeah  :tongue2:

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## Ginsan

I've been a bit more mindful these past few days and I noticed something interesting in my lucid dream of last night and an ld of the day before that. I tried to meditate, and my mind was much less chaotic than usual. This calmness is probably a result of my moment to moment calmness, and I hope I'll keep pursuing this calmness. Yesterday I thought of meditating while lucid and I did it for a few seconds, I think I noticed some difference but for some stupid reason I stopped and lost my mental clarity and continued whatever useless thing I was doing  :tongue2:   Last night I thought I had a dream (when I was actually dreaming) so I got up and thought of meditating. But then I thought "hey, let's jump out the window and fly" , but then I had this feeling that maybe I'm not really dreaming. Stupid as I always am in my dreams, I didn't do any reality checks. I didn't meditate, went to my bed and then woke up in my real bed, feeling disappointed.

By meditating I mean just sitting still and focusing on my breath, being mindful/aware of the sensations and thoughts so that I can anchor myself. I have never done this succesfully but I feel like it will work if I do it correctly and I want to at least try it out. The problem is that I am never fully clear headed, it's like I don't have my full mental faculties with me when I become lucid. It's annoying but if I have learned one thing in these past 3 years of faling to master lds, is that you just have to keep trying with iron consistency because results will definitely come but NEVER CONSISTENTLY  :tongue2:   Sometimes you do nothing and get lucid/recall/etc and sometimes you try hard but get nothing. But if you are always trying, the average of these few months is almost always going to be better than the average of the last few months.

It's good to be back on track  ::D:

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## NyxCC

Congrats on the lds! Your post got me thinking how cool it would be to experience meditation while non-lucid. I have one interesting experience where I was non-lucid, trying to do a form of visualization. Since it was a dream already, it was super easy and the dream teleported me to a new place resulting in some form of in dream wild. Interestingly, after that I realized I was dreaming too. If only we could incubate more such experiences!  :smiley: 





> It's annoying but if I have learned one thing in these past 3 years of faling to master lds, is that you just have to keep trying with iron consistency because results will definitely come but NEVER CONSISTENTLY  Sometimes you do nothing and get lucid/recall/etc and sometimes you try hard but get nothing. But if you are always trying, the average of these few months is almost always going to be better than the average of the last few months.



^^ Good points!

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## Ginsan

Hey check out my thread in the Dream Control section, this might be a new thing for me  ::D:

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## NyxCC

Saw it! Well, when it comes to fighting and swords you'll get the best advice from Sensei! I haven't used superpowers in combination with swords/fighting but I like to use superpowers from time to time to have fun. Mostly I enjoy all possible things you can try to do with water. Super speed and super strenght are also relatively straight forward - you just have to remember physical properties are absolutely bendable. Do you have particular questions about super powers? Do you have super powers in nlds?

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## Ginsan

Not really, I´m listening to Sensei´s podcasts and he has great tips. Especially about items. He said something like "believe in items instead of yourself because you only have a limited amount of dream energy". I always have trouble with dream energy and I hope I'll remember that when I get lucid  :smiley: 

And it would be awesome using water like Katara  ::D:   If I forgot to use a sword, I definitely hope I'll remember to bend water  :tongue2:

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## Ginsan

I got a moment of lucidity again but didn't do anything with it. My number one issue seems to be stabilization, then recall. I got lucid often enough now but it's too short and I am never really clear headed. And the problem is, I can't do anything if I'm not "fully there" when lucid, I simply don't hink about stabilization. Do you have any tips beside practicing mindfulness?

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## NyxCC

Congrats! The best way to keep an ld going is to keep being engaged in the dream. Try different things - from simple examination of surroundings to taking action. Having a task to complete comes in very handy at such moments.

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## Ginsan

Okay I'll try to keep that in mind.

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## Ginsan

I've had some barely lucid moments again. In one dream I was being attacked by a car and a helicopter and I recalled movie scenes of helicopters exploding/catching fire and put my hands out to the car and helicopter and it worked. It took some effort and about a minute but it worked  :tongue2:   I flew a lot. But I never had any real clarity so I never thought of doing RCs or anchoring or remember to practice swordplay.

I also received a nice tip from Sensei's podcast. That is to read journal entries before sleeping so I tried that. Usually I just delete the entry from my phone and it gets lost. But now I don't delete them and I actually read all of them before sleeping. They are short entries so it's okay, and my recall seems to be improving I know it's too soon to draw conclusions in 3 days but it's been improving these last 3 days. I'll keep doing this and hopefully I'll find out that this is a legitimate improvement  ::D: 

EDIT: with "it worked" I mean the car and helicopter caught fire and were defeated and the people inside died or at least they stopped attacking. I don't remember what I did after that, maybe I flew off, because there were more people after me  :tongue2:

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## NyxCC

Sounds like a cool dream! Congrats!  ::D: 





> I also received a nice tip from Sensei's podcast. That is to read journal entries before sleeping so I tried that. Usually I just delete the entry from my phone and it gets lost. But now I don't delete them and I actually read all of them before sleeping. They are short entries so it's okay, and my recall seems to be improving I know it's too soon to draw conclusions in 3 days but it's been improving these last 3 days. I'll keep doing this and hopefully I'll find out that this is a legitimate improvement



You have been deleting your DJ entries before, oh, no! How do you keep track of what happened in the long term? Glad you have switched the strategy. Going over past entries can be exciting - so much cool stuff in both nlds and lds.

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## Ginsan

Yeah occasionally there is cool and weird stuff  :tongue2:   It's especially fun to read dreams you had forgotten.

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## Ginsan

Yesterday I added this little thing. I read the dj entries on my phone, after reading it I close my eyes and think about it for 5 slow breaths and then I move on to the next. I remembered several forgotten dreams and wrote them down. I will continue to type in everything and reflect on them until it takes more than 30 minutes. And then the real fun begins. I can calculate how many dreams take up 30 minutes to read and reflect on, and once I have a dream limit, I can throw out the dreams I don't like keep the ones I like and constantly upgrade this collection of journal entries. I think it will have a positive effect on my dreams to come if I have this habit of thinking about the best dreams I had. What do you think about this idea? If this works for me, I might make a thread because it seems like a good way to improve recall and the quality of your dreams.

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## NyxCC

That sounds like a good idea.  :smiley:  Would you do this in the mornings or in the evenings or both?

Let me know how it goes!

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## Ginsan

In the evenings. My recall is still basically the same but let's not be too quick in drawing conclusions  :smiley:

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## Ginsan

My dream life seems to get richer. Obviously it's my memory that's getting better but it feels like my dream life is getting richer  :tongue2:   Even though I can not remember everything, I have this feeling the past few days that the dream had more content and lasted longer than I can recall. But last week and the months before that I wouldn't have that feeling. My memory would tell me that I only had 5-10 minutes of boring dreaming. I think this is progress  ::D:   Other than this feeling that the dream had more than I remember, I also actually remember more of the dream than a week ago and the times before.

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## NyxCC

That's great!  :smiley: 





> Even though I can not remember everything, I have this feeling the past few days that the drream had more content and lasted longer than I can recall



I know what you mean. A lot of times I would have an intense dream, but when I recall the plot half of the details are gone. I think recall training may help with getting more of the details. They also say doing ADA has an effect of boosting dream vividness and possibly recall.

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## Ginsan

Alright, I'll keep that in mind.

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## Ginsan

I had a short and pretty nice (for my standards) moment of lucidity. I flew, I breathed hot air with lots of volume. The air was white and cloudy, it wasn't pure white but like clouds, you know, white but kind of bubbly and with textures and stuff. It resembled clouds. It was hot and it was a bit bigger than the flame you get when you put a flame to a can of deodorant and spray. It felt pretty nice. It wasn't very hot, only hot enough to fend off people, but had lots of volume to it was cool. I lost lucidity and a few moments later I regained it, I thought "this is my dream, I can do whatever I want." Then I yelled, in an impossibly loud, booming voice "THIS IS MY WORLD!!!" "I CAN DO WHAT I WANT IN HERE!!!", then I kissed a girl who was eating with me at the time, I forced her to spit out the food first because I wanted to kiss her  :tongue2:   It tasted like the food though and she wasn't that beautiful so it was disappointing. I moved up a staircase and walking next to me was this very beautiful girl and I stopped, she too. I caressed her face for like 5 seconds and admired her beauty, smiling, wanted to kiss her but I got distracted by something, lost lucidity and woke up within a few seconds. I had a moment of really nice clarity though so I am happy with this  :smiley: 

I think this breathing hot air might become a thing for me, it might become large amounts of fire later on, because I did it without thinking in 3 or 4 lucid dreams, or half-lucid. Also girls are always willing to kiss/have sex in dreams, this gives me hope for, when I am more skilled, that I might fall in love in a lucid dream  :tongue2:   It may sound silly but why not?  ::D:

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## Ginsan

I just had 3 lucid dreams in one night!  ::D:   The first two were pretty long, like 20 minutes at least, up to 30 o.0  I remember doing an affirmation and looking at my hands, noticing my finger count switching between 6-7. In the second ld I was summoning people by looking behind me at least 2 or 3 times, I'm not sure how and when and even if I did it but I vaguely remember changing the whole course of the dream, some chaos was going on and everyone was getting attacked with magic and I did something to make it peaceful again. The first dream had over the top fights, no fast action but some overpowered and overpowering creature was chasing me and I was flying through thin walls (it was a dojo that has these thin wood-like walls), trying to escape. It took 3000 characters on my notepad to describe it all. I lost a lot, again, but there is genuine progress  ::D:   I'm going to read about stabillization and prolonging now, because I remember remembering to do stabillzation, but perhaps because it wasn't fresh in my memory, I didn't know what to do, except for vaguely reminding myself that it is a dream.

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## NyxCC

That's fantastic, Ginsan! Congrats! Whoa, you are on fire these few days! Really nice the lds were long and you had good dream control too!  ::goodjob2::

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## Ginsan

We shouldn't make too much of the dream control but it was much better than before  ::D:   And I really am on fire!  ::mrgreen::

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## Ginsan

I had 5-10 minutes of lucidity, once there were a lot of eagles in the dream flying around and it was good at first but when they got a little annoying I commanded all birds to go away and it worked  :smiley:   The lucid part was not the good part though. The whole dream was about me and my girlfriend! There was no sex, just kissing (mostly cheek/face) and caressing/hugging. It was very nice  ::D:   Near the end we were sitting on a pickup truck with her family, I got bored and/or got my lucidity back and decided to grab her and fly off into the green fields we were driving past and I had doubts about carrying her in flight but decided it would work, and it did. So we flew around and again I had trouble landing (I couldn't go down) but we landed eventually. Then came the birds and that was near the end.

I like intimacy much more than sex and I'm glad I finally had a dream like this. I still feel the warm fuzzy vibes  :tongue2:

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## NyxCC

Congrats!  :smiley: 





> I like intimacy much more than sex and I'm glad I finally had a dream like this.



Right, I think the kissing and overall being in love in dreams is being underestimated. A lot of people talk only about sex but feelings in dreams including lucid dreams can be very profound so it's an area definitely worth exploring.

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## Ginsan

Compassion  check out this nice little thing I wrote  ::D:

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## Ginsan

I had a lucid dream in which I had pretty nice control over my flight and especially landing. Before flying I thought to myself that I should stabillise and I looked at my hands for a few moments, then I tried to become mindful of my bodily sensations and I felt my arm shake a little and I felt that the dream was destabillising when I paid attention to my body so I stopped. And I was really sleepy before sleeping, but I woke up after 6 hours and couldn't go back to sleep. I had almost perfect clarity, almost perfect. If I was a little brighter I would have remembered to investigate objects and do other reality chekcs, like checking gravity, electronics, text.

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## NyxCC

Awesome! Congrats Ginsan!  ::goodjob:: 

Thanks for the link! Will watch the video soon! Can use a bit of inspiration and compassion talk will come in very handy for some day moments.  :wink2:

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## Ginsan

No problem friend  :smiley:

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## Ginsan

I had a pretty awesome lucid dream, even though I remember very little. I think it was between 30 and 45 minutes long. I was casting magic, there was a really really powerful magician laying multiple layers of spells in various places of the room, trapping me. I don't know what happened. I kissed girls a lot. I don't remember sex. I could do 2 spells that I can remember, 1 of them was fire from my hand, the flame was about the size of a head, maybe slightly bigger and I think I could shoot it. I don't know what else I could do. I had similar skill with some black flame or black magic stuff. I don't think I played around with these too much, 5 minutes at most. Somewhere I told a girl that this is a dream and that we can kiss and have sex without worrying about the people around us. To prove it I picked her up and flew around. Another part I did sword swings without a sword, just the motion with my arms and I don't remember it becoming a sword but I was still doing swings, as if slashes appeared from my hands. Then I met Vergil (a character from Devil May Cry) and I battled him for about 10 seconds I think.

When I wope up I wasn't aware of the dream. I just woke up, lay in bed, chill. Open the window and rolling shutter and enjoy the fresh air. About 15-20 minutes after waking up, I grabbed my phone, looked at my notes for no real reason, I'm just relaxing and grabbing my phone randomly. And suddenly I gasp hard! In a flash the memory of this entire dream explodes in my mind! It was really awesome o.0  And then I wrote it down. Have you ever experienced something like this?

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## NyxCC

Cool! Sounds like you had a lot of fun and for quite a while too!  ::D: 

It sometimes happens to me to forget an ld too, even good ones can be lost in between sleep and wakes. Good job bringing this one back!

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## Ginsan

Yeah, I´m actually proud of it even though it was just dumb luck  :tongue2: 

EDIT: Actually no, it can also be a result of my effort instead of dumb luck

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## NyxCC

Yup, can be the result of all the training plus a grain of luck!  :smiley:

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## Ginsan

I had a pretty long lucid dream last night. It felt like it was around 45 minutes to an hour o.0  At least once (but possibly 3-4 times I really don't remember) the dream was fading or I was losing control and I looked at my hands to stabilize. I had some neat fire magic, I could stretch my hands, cause fire and make someone disappear. I don't remember that it hurt them, they just disappeared as the flames spread over their body. I was pretty bad at flying, I had trouble landing again. I also experienced something I had earlier. I was flying too high and got scared. I am scared of going too high and going above the clouds/into space and this time and the time before I was on the verge of waking myself up because I was scared of going too high but both times I somehow managed to stop going up. It's pretty annoying and I don't know what to do about it :S

Also, I'm feeling confident enough to try something new. I'm going to read this stabilization lesson and this dream control tutorial and pick 1 technique and try to use it in the dream. I'll edit this post and let you know which one it will be, I'll keep it at least 1 week, maybe 2/3 weeks is better but I'll see.

Edit: I decided. I'm going to fall backward and trust the dream. I want to get over fears, I want to become fearless in the dreaming world. I don't want to go to outer space yet so this will be a baby step towards freedom from fear  :smiley:

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## NyxCC

Awesome! You're getting really good with induction and are able to have super lenghty dreams too, good job!  :smiley: 

About the flying, I can partially relate to the feeling of unease. I don't quite have a fear of heights, however, on several occasions have experienced a related discomfort while flying. One of the things that helps is not to focus as much on the feeling of discomfort or fear and if possible to focus on any points of interest on the ground. That way you can allow yourself to zoom in/move towards the earth plus it gives your mind something to focus on + stability. You can also try looking at the whole flying experience from a non-human (bird, cloud, etc.) perspective or imagine it to be game like or google earth.

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## Ginsan

Thanks I'll think about it. Focusing on a spot on the ground sounds great. How do I look at it from a bird's perspective though? I can't really "imagine" being a bird, the closest I can get is to fly like I usually do.

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## NyxCC

Yes, you don't need to transform into a bird, just feel like you are one. Then focus on the ground. By the way, if there is some cool place you want to go, this will be the moment to think that you are just beginning to recognize it being down there.  :smiley:

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## Ginsan

If there is 1 thing I really want to do, it's to have a girl with me and just talk to her, maybe hug some. But that's no location  :tongue2:   So I thought, the best place to have a conversation with a nice girl (in my opinion) is in a grassy field with flowers, clear skies and chirping birds and that smells fresh. So probably the best thing to do is to "recognize" that a beautiful park is down there. I can then find something green and focus on it and try to make it happen from there  :smiley:   I really hope that this will work  ::D: 

You know, I'm really glad I don't know you in real life, I don't know your age, whether you are male or female, otherwise I'd probably be too embarrassed to tell you these things  ::happyme::

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## Ginsan

I felt bad for not telling you about this AWESOME lucid dream I had yesterday night (not last night) because it was such in awesome dream. But because it was so awesome I have to make some effort to convey its awesomeness and I am lazy  :tongue2:   I read this article the day before the dream. My Tutorial for extending Lucid Dream Time. Hours of LD And I applied it in the dream. It was very effective and I felt the warmth of the sunlight, the wind blowing on my body as I flew, I heard the wind. I engaged the senses multiple times and it worked. I also spent some time cuddling with a girl and that felt really nice. Her skin was warm and soft I had a buzz yesterday and now I can recall just how nice it felt. And later on as I was flying I just kept going up, at a point I was going too high too fast and I screamed and closed my eyes, trying to wake myself up because I was scared. I didn't wake up and I didn't go higher luckily. Near the beginning when I was flying after stabillizing the dream was really vivid and colorful and I focused on something on the ground in order to land, as you told me. I focused at a put and within a few seconds it first got better looking with more textures and green around it, then it became a hole and then it became a deeper hole that went so deep I couldn't see the bottom  :tongue2:   I don't remember if I actually landed or not but that's just an interesting thing. The reason I loved this dream so much is because the method of engaging the senses is very effective and because of the cuddling. The warmth.... Oh the warmth  ::angel::   The lucid dream lasted about an hour and I think I was lucid the whole time except at the beginning few minutes.

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## NyxCC

That really is awesome!  :smiley:  Congrats! I know what you mean when you say that words don't do it justice at times like this. Must have felt amazing to experience all the detail. Good job dealing with flying too. I'm sure with more practice you'll put any flying worries behind.

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## Ginsan

Hey pal, you might be wondering where I've been so I thought I'd tell you  :tongue2: 
I've been sleeping with the window open, which means the shutters stays up, which means I eat all the sunlight during the juiciest REM periods, which means I get no lucid dreams  :tongue2:   But it helps me fall asleep and I want to make that trade-off.

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## NyxCC

Hey Ginsan! If you want you can try sleepying with a sleep mask or just a T-shirt or something of the sort to help block the light.

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## Ginsan

I never thought of that xD  I think a T-shirt will be annoying but a sleep mask might be brilliant!  I'll look into it.

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## Ginsan

I don't understand why, but I am suddenly excited to lucid dream again!  ::D: 

I have been having lucid dreams regularly for at least the past month, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the last 3 months, I think once a night on average. I can often do some flying, some magic, they last for 5-15 minutes, which is a very rough restimate, and I am not very clear headed, barely aware of the possibilites. I'm proud of this  ::D:   Even as I say it, I'm amazed that I have this consistency with 0 effort. I don't record my dreams, I don't reality check, I rarely think about lucid dreaming. Although I never stopped being mindful and trying to maintain a clear head.

I'm going to set my alarm for WBTB and I'm also going to record my dream in the morning. I'm very excited and I also really optimistic that I'm going to really really improve over the course of the next few weeks and if I keep up my efforts I think I'll be reliably having pretty cool lucid dreams within a month  ::D: 

Oh, I'll also do some reality checks every now and then, and remind myself of stabillization techniques after the RC, and I'll meditate a little bit more.

And I don't have any particular goals. Even though there are are 100s of things that I really really really want to do. I mean, really! All the hundreds of things  :tongue2:   But I don't have the skill and, for some mysterious reason, I am patient about this. So my plan is to just breathe, become aware of my bodily sensations and surroundings, and then at the start of the dream I'll just hang around and see what I feel like doing. I think it would be best to focus on clear headedness and awareness and staying lucid as much as possible, because I have a feeling that especially for beginners, actually remaining lucid somehow does more for your skill than anything else. I feel like I'm gaining experience points for every minute I am lucid  :tongue2:   I'll probably try out lots of crazy things just because "But what if it works?!!", but I'll try to focus my attention to remaining clear headed and aware of my surroundings.

edit: Good to talk to you again, my friend = )  I love your new picture, it made me instinctivaly stretch my lungs, eager to fill it with sweet, fresh air.

edit 2: I'll also keep refreshing the letters "L" and "D" on my left and right palm (LD on both palms), I have a feeling that this will serve as a good reality check, it gives my palms an extra special look xD

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## NyxCC

Sounds like a breakthrough moment for your lding skills Ginsan, congrats!  :smiley: 

Apart from not doing anything ld related, have you been doing something else - meditation perhaps, that you feel might be contributing to your current hot streak? 

So, you have written L and D on both your hands? That's a really cool way to RC and remind yourself about lding!  ::D:

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## Ginsan

I'll add a short version, because I went on for quite a while, it's mostly ranting xD Basically it says, it's probably more a very gradual improvement than a hot streak, but I will have a very hot streak very soon because I'll be meditating more and also taking supplements. And hopefully the hot streak will extend into a huge blazing inferno of nightly awesomeness, only dying when I die. I also eat lots of fruits and veggies, and I think this is recent, so this may be helping too.

Here is the long version.
Well, a lot of little things I would guess. I have been valueing mindfulness for at least the past 2 years, even if I never meditated much. I sometimes listen to talks about meditation. I've also always been fascinated by the possibilites of dreams, I also just sleep a lot, and make sure I sleep comfortable, I'd neglect everything down to my hygene and friendships, but sleep is one of the very last things I can let go  :tongue2:   but I'm not sure if it's a hot streak.  I think it's been either lingering or improving extremely slowly and gradually, with the usual ups and downs. I've also always been fantasizing about LDs, so I think that it's not likely to be a hot streak.

I may get an extremely hot streak though, one burning with the fire of a thousand suns!! I have some money again and I'm going to spend it very wisely. I bought an mp3 player and a headset had overwhelmingly good reviews. I can put guided meditations tracks on it, this makes it almost unnecessary to have any discipline, in my case, so I'll be meditating more. Now I can also do this in the privacy of my room, whereas usually I'd have to wait for the house to be quiet and listen downstairs, on the computer. But when the house is quiet I want to do other things on the computer  :tongue2:   So now I just have more opportunities to meditate with a guide. I can also go outside, sit in a park and meditate, walk, enjoy music. This will help my dreams in several ways, exercise (good for anything you can think of), fresh air (good for everything), and I'll have a much more peaceful and clear mind while meditating and also the rest of the day.

Now comes the explenation for the thousand-suns-hot-streak: I'm going to buy supplements  = D  I'm going to do some internet researching on several things, on my research list is now Calea, Galantamine, Chlonine and Zinc. I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy Calea and put it inside by capsules, because the taste is apparently horrible. I remember reading on bodybuilding forums that Zinc is awesome for higher quality sleep, and I remember from 1 person that Galantamine boosts recall, I also know from DV that Galantamine and Chlonine are popular.

Supps, high quality sleep, a clear mind induced by meditation, dream journaling, tons of ideas for LDing, the only thing I need now is to CHILLLLL, because if I can't keep my excitement at a moderate level, I might die from insomnia before having a single dream again xD  I set my alarm to up after 6 hours of sleep and I was sleep deprived for 3 days, so I assumed I could go back to sleep, but I was way too excited about these new developments to sleep. Even now, 4 hours after waking up, I'm still feeling a buzz and tingly in my stomach xD  After waking up I was giggling because I was so excited about all the thins I could be doing in my dreams within a month from now.

I'll let you know how it goes and I will probably also open a thread in the Supps category  :smiley: 


*Spoiler* for _The last notepad entry in my phone after waking up, before going downstairs. Yes I typed it in English, even though it's the 3rd language I learned xD_: 



I found the perfect formula. I take a mdoerate amount of Calea, a moderate recall boost, fueled by a dream journal, meditation, quality sleep, time and patience, and I'll be having the most amazing dreams within no time. I can use Vraad sorcery, I can ride Darkhorse *2 figures from the book series Legends of the Dragonrealm*, I can go to the Bleach universe, become Halibel's friend, fight Ulquiorra, learn tech *sword tech^^* from Yamamoto and Kyouraku, from Dante, fight Vergil, give Zaraki the fights of his life. *Dante and Vergil are from Devil May Cry, a game where you slash up demons and the rest are from the Bleach anime* I can visite different kinds of civilisations, I can become a giant bird and *whoosh* though the most amazing landscapes *those *'s of the whoosh were in the original notepad*, I can sit in the mountains, breathe the most beautiful air, I can visit Paganini, Vieuxtemps, Enescu, Toscanini, Wieniawski, Menuhin, BEETHOVEN, hear the most beautiful music. *Toscanini is a conductor, Enescu and Menuhin are dead violinsists, of whom I have recordings, of the other 3 violinists no recordings exist, they died too early, you know Beethoven..* Dude..... There is so fucking much I can do. A great journey!! Starts... With but a single step. If I am always this excited, I might die from insomnia, and then I will sleep forever, without tasting the glorious depths of my mind. I can become a dragon.




I am confident that I could write 10 times as much text as that, that is just a taste of all the things I want to do. Please note that, as horny as I am, there is no sex there. Those things are all better than sex  = D


*Spoiler* for _Ranting about Legends of the Dragonrealm_: 



That book series, Legends of the Dragonrealm, contains probably about 15 titles now and I am now reading the 6th book. It has arrogant, savage dragons, huge armadillo-like creatures, aggressive and savage bird-people who communicate by sending jumbles of images/feelings/sensations/thoughts to each others' minds and use medallions filled with magic to fight, but even without medallion they are powerful sorcerers, they are also very cunning and deceptive, and even have powerful muscles, talons and beaks to tear into probably anything but dragon skin. They are also fast... Scary, huh?  :tongue2:  The dragons can shapeshift into human forms, where they seem to wear armor but it's actually their skin, the dragonhelm is part of the face, they occasionally let a few hisses slip when talking, their faces are obscured by the dragonhelm, because they don't actually have much of a face (I don't understand their faces), their eyes are glowing orbs, in human or dragon form. And that transformation process is described in amazing ways, when I think of the transformations, the memory is almost as vivid as if I had seen a video of it. There are beings that are of the human race, but not much like humans at all. You have the wolf-raiders, who are wolf-men with powerful sorcerous abilities. The Vraad, the near immortal beings who change their faces, hair, stop aging, illness, conjure up food, teleport, build gigantic citadels that can shape itself according to their masters' desires, ofcourse they have insane offensive and defensive spells, all of that through their god-like sorcerous abilities... Imagine me becoming one of them o.0  And there is so much more to this world, so much things to do in a lucid dream by taking ideas from this book. There are countless other races, I haven't been introduced to them.. Yet  ::D:   And every race has its own powers, personality, type of civilization, history, most of the major races almost as deadly and fascinating as any other. All of this is vividly stored in my head, I think you'd agree that if I was a skilled lucid dreamer, I could have so much adventure... So much fucking adventure! Also, beside the major races there are also minor drakes, wyvers, those creatures that look you in the eye and turn you to into stone, and all drakes are slightly different, depending on where they live, were born and they also differ from drake to drake.




edit: I consider myself a fairly light sleeper and I have trouble keeping a sleep schedule going, so I won't take Galantamine. Zinc seems to be a solid supplement and Calea, doesn't seem to be as reliable as Galantamine, but I'm still going to try it at the very least 10 times. It's still one of the most popular supplements. Melatonin is dirt cheap, like Zinc, so I'll be taking those 2 for sure. I'm not sure about Calea and Choline yet. I'm going to work within a few hours and when I'm done, the stores for Zinc and Melatonin may be closed, but I think I will be able to buy Calea in time. I'll also be quite sleepy so I may get lucky tonight, because I'll sleep a lot.

edit 2: Dude,.,... Lady!! I just realised, I could watch some nature videos and turn into any creature I want! Seriously... How is Lucid Dreaming not the most popular thing in the world?

edit final: I bought Melatonin, Zinc, and omega 3 fish oil (overall health), and 100 grams of Calea  ::D:   Tonight I will wake up after about 4.5 hours, so that I can be sure that I will be able to sleep again. I also bought a capsule machine, so in the night, when everybody's sleeping (my parents wouldn't approve of this, the tight asses...), I'll make some capsules and hopefully enjoy some vivid dreams!

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## Ginsan

I did not get amazing dreams.

The Melatonin seemed to help put me to sleep, I don't know if the zinc helped, I have no reference point. I did a 40 min guided meditation before sleeping, after 4 hours woke up, drank some the tea of 3 grams of calea (the taste is not bad at all, I didn't even use any honey or sugar or anything), then I did the same 40min guided meditation and afterwards I couldn't sleep, for at least 90 minutes  :Sad:   Eventually I did sleep, for 7-8 more hours  :tongue2:   I remembered more dream content, and I did not have anything amazing, all random, forgettable, trivial events. Except for the first part, where I kept being woken up by something or someone scary and I was too scared to move or even talk, then I woke up again with the same thing, this happened 3 or 4 times, the last time was another FA but without scares and I had some boring things with my brother. After that I remembered fragments, during this 8 hour sleep period I woke up.went back to sleep I'd guess 3-5 times. Too many factors were at play here, so I can't really say anything. Even the strong sleepiness after taking Melatonin I can't attribute to Melatonin. Too many people are too quick to draw conclusions, not me, nah-uh  :tongue2:   As the guy in the shop said, I'll take about the same amount of Calea 4 days in a row, and then rest for 4 days, and repeat this twice (so 3 times in total), and then I'll double the amount for another 3x cycle. I'll  probably be able to say something about the effect of this particular dose of Calea after 24 days.

The new headset is great, btw  ::D: 

Also, I have a strong suspicion that the supps really helped me sleep, and it was a very beautiful 11-12 hours of sleep, but I'll be able to see if this is true or not within a few weeks.

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## NyxCC

Love all the motivation Ginsan! I think this will help you get a lot of lds! Great idea about the nature videos and animals! Why don't you try to incubate this as a dream and possibly turn it into ld? I had a very weird (for me anyways) shapeshifting nld couple of nights ago that was almost lucid. It happened by accident but I can defininetly see how one can watch favorite movies, do some visualization during the day and before bed to help dream of anything one wants.  :smiley:

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## Ginsan

That's too much effort, I don't have enough motivation to do that  :tongue2:

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## NyxCC

You never know until you give it a try!  :smiley:  At some point I realized that I was incubating my dreams anyways before going to bed. But what was I incubating - thoughts of negative events of the past day or worries for events that may or may not happen. And then guess what I was dreaming of? Now, when I go to bed I know _not_ to think about those things and think of something pleasant instead. Well, most of the time.  :tongue2:

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## Ginsan

Mehh I'm still not convinced  :tongue2:   If I want something pleasant to think about before sleeping, I can just read Legends of the Dragonrealm, which I very often do.

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## Ginsan

Today I couldn't sleep at all. I slept for about 4 hours, I think, and the rest of the time was spent mostly awake and sometimes falling asleep for a few minutes. It was extremely irritating. I didn't take Calea, because I couldn't sleep.

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## Ginsan

My alarm woke me up after 4 hours of sleep, I remembered the last part of a dream, wrote it down, went downstairs, made some Calea tea and drank it. Again, it was bitter but not horrible. It's almost tasty. But I couldn't sleep, again. I was awake for 3-4 hours, spent some time listening to music and reading Legends of the Dragonrealm, nothing I did worked. I did some mindfulness training while lying down. My mind was tired, because I couldn't think straight at all, like when you're very sleepy, but my body was very much awake, even energetic. It's an extremely irritating experience, to lie down for hours and not be able to sleep, even though I really really want to. I did buy a capsule machine so I can make it into capsules and not have to make tea every night, which is way too time consuming, the bitterness wakes me up, and I don't want my parents to find out that, even though I have no income, I'm spending significant portions of my money to have better dreams.

But I'll have to find a way to pulverize the dry leaves, so I can make Calea capsules. My parents are away and will remain away for at about an hour, probably, so now is a good time to find out how to pulverize these leaves  :tongue2:   I hope I will then be able to take in Calea and actually fall asleep afterwards  :tongue2:

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## NyxCC

I'm no expert in this supp, but if it helps with lucid dreaming, I think it may indeed be the reason for your excessive wakefulness. Can you decrease the amount you take?

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## Ginsan

I'm taking the recommended dosage, but the guy in the shop said that it is not stimulating and will not keep me awake. I'm pretty sure it's the tea. I have to go downstairs, wait for the water to boil, then take it upstairs, wait for it to cool down, throw the leaves out of the cup and then drink it. It takes about 45 minutes, after which I'm not sleepu at all anymore. I also looked around quite a bit via Google and nobody mentioned anything like it waking you up or keeping you awake. I can't get the coffee grinder to work, strangely. If I did, I'd have 4 bags of dream powder by now... I can always go back to the shop and ask them to grind the leaves for me. It'll take a few hours and 10 bucks for the train rise, but that's alright.

edit: I actually got a bag of 1 gram of an extract of the Calea, which is 10 times stronger per gram than the leaves. 3 Grams was the dosage the guy in the shop recommended, so I could go 3 nights with this. Because the stuff is in small enough chunks, I can put all of it in probably 1 or 2 capsules. I'm extremely tempted to take all of it in 1 night, because I've been failing for 2 days after being so excited (for months, actually) about Calea and I'm also sleep deprived, so I should have a great, long sleep. I think I'll make 3 capsules, and if I get sleepy rather late, I'll just take them 1 by 1. But if I get sleepy early, meaning there won't be any noise and light around the time I wake up, I'll take 3 capsules  :tongue2:   Or maybe I'll take 1 anyway, just to prevent myself from getting so excited I stay awake again. I dunno... I'll say what happened tomorrow xD

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## Ginsan

I couldn't find the capsules, which is really really strange. 1 Possibility is that my parents found them in my bag, along with the Calea and in order to test me they hid the capsules. So if I ask them about it, we can talk about why I bought all those leaves, but if I don't, they will suspect that I am hiding the leaves and capsules and that they're things I don't want them to know about. Far-sought? May be, I think it's quite likely.

But I didn't want to make tea again, because it kept me awake twice, so I went without Calea. But I woke up in the middle of the night, without alarm, after about 4-5 hours of sleep, went to pee, back into my bed within 2 minutes and couldn't sleep again. After laying in bed for 30-90 minutes, I listened to some music, read the book, and here I am watching Tenascious D videos. I hope that this won't go on. Yesterday I was sleepy enough to fall asleep around 8 o clock, without melatonin, whereas 2 days ago I fell asleep around midnight. If the pattern continues, I'll fall asleep in the afternoon, sleep 4-5 hours, wake up, go downstairs, and repeat this pattern. It wouldn't be bad if I just slept less and dreamt less, but my mind is also fuzzy, I can't think straight, I'm not in a good mood, I'm impulsive and have even less motivation to do anything that requires effort.

When the shops open I'll go buy some new capsules, but I don't know what to do about my inability to sleep. I actually do know, but I just don't want to. For example, I can start going to the gym again and start preparing for my university entrance exam. Both are very important in themselves, and now that I can't sleep it seems almost like I have no choice but to either suffer from sleeplesness or go to the gym/do homework.

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## Ginsan

Out of impulsivity, and because there was nobody home, I used the remaining 15-20 grams in the bag (I have 3 more bags) and made tea from it. I'll soon go to sleep and after 4 hours I'll wake up and drink the tea. I actually needed 2 cups to stir it, because it was way too thick. It barely looked like tea xD  So now the tea is ready and within a few hours I'll wake up and drink it  = D  Yes I'm being impulsive instead of smart and thinking for the long term.

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## Ginsan

I'm going to make some journal entries, because I only need 49 more points to get that sweet glowing username  = D

Also, I couldn't sleep again, this time I only slept 3.5 hours. After taking the Calea I almost fell asleep 3-4 times and every time I noticed my awareness shifting away, I was so excited by being able to fall asleep and dream after 2 days of not being able to do it and after having drunk 5+times the amount of recommended Calea, I woke up every time. I guess I'll have to start making myself tired...

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## Ginsan

You're probably recognizing a pattern here. Motivation for a short period of time followed by a usually much longer period of lack of motiviation. I'm in the probably short period of motivation now. Because of the competition, I thought "Alright, let's at least journal some dreams, even if they are not awesoem". And my recall is improving slowly, maybe I'll get lucid one of these days  = )

Also, I started practicing on the violin and also juggling (I'm pretty close to mastering 4 balls xD), just 15-30 minutes a day per activity. It may seem insignificant, but I also often watch lectures by scientists on Youtube, and I read books from that awesome series Legends of the Dragonrealm. So it adds up to my fatigue, allowing me to become tired and properly fall asleep and stay asleep. I might do WBTBs again if my motivation for juggling and violin paying remains intact.

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## NyxCC

Good to hear you're in a good mood for ld and violin, Ginsan!  :smiley:  I have to say, I have ups and downs as well. Sometimes I can't even decide what to do in my next ld and that is usually automatically tied to my motivation.

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## Ginsan

I got a 20-25 minute lucid dream the night before last night and I had about 15 minutes of lucidity last night. What did I do? Enter the competition, start journalling my dreams, and I repeat a mantra. I repeat to myself over and over "if I see a girl, I am in a dream". I am confident that this works because I always see girls in my dreams and I NEVER see girls in real life. The strange thing is that those 2 dreams I did not become lucid upon seeing a girl. This may seem far-sought, but I think that just by repeating the mantra and thereby being confident that I will become lucid and also by constantly saying it, 10-15 minutes before sleeping my mind is filled with this mantra of becoming lucid by seeing a girl and being confident that I will become lucid and thinking about how I'm going to relax and observe my surroundings and have a stable and long dream.

About the first night, it was really boring. The only interesting thing about it was that I was slipping out of the dream and once or twice even came back to my FA bed but I was somehow able to will myself back. This happened 3-5 times I think. For the second night, here is the link to the journal entry: Pretty cool lucid dream, though probably boring to read Only the last 2 paragraphs are relevant, even to my mentor.  = )

I just realized that I am not getting very excited about 2 wonderful successes, I mean... About 40 minutes of lucidity in 2 nights!!  ::o:  But I think it's a good thing that I'm not getting too excited, I am excited enough to keep journalling and doing mantra's but not so excited that I can't sleep or will prematurely end a dream. So let's hope that I keep it cool  :tongue2: 

Also, I am not planning on doing crazy things in dreams, yet  ::D:   I just want to remain calm, stabilize and lengthen the dream, and I think I will know when it is time to go crazy in dreams. Maybe it's precisely because I have so many things I want to do (just think of post #108), I want to go slowly and gradually and make sure that I will get there some day, even if it's not soon. I have so many things planned that it's just impossible to do it haphazardly. So maybe that's why I'm able to remain calm. Or it's just that I have been at this mediocre level for at years and I have learned my lesson in a very bitter way and that's why I want to go slowly and securely.

edit: I just made some Calea tea with 3 times the recommended dosage of the extract. I don't have a systematic way to ingest the stuff (I can't pulverize it and put it into capsules) that's why I put in so much and I am going to sleep within 4-5 hours. It appears that it's not necessary to take it after 4-5 hours of sleep, so I'm going to try it.

edit2: do you remember this thread I made? LD Control chamber / Ultimate god mode I read through it and it's pretty fun to see the excitement I had 2 years ago. I wonder what kind of a person I was 2 years ago.. It seems like I have become rather boring, if that thread and that excitement is an indication of what I was like  :Sad:   This made me want to start writing in the waking journal on DV, so that later on I can read my own stuff and find out what kind of a person I was. It also gave me a wake up call, telling me: _"Hey!!! You freakin' idiot!!! You can't live on like this, your soul is dying and it has been dying for who the hell knows how long! Do something that excites you instead of living like a freakin' zombie!!"_

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## Ginsan

I'm going to attempt WILD tonight. I'm going to read some stuff about it and then try doing it. I hate it that I am not getting lucid as often and as long and as lucid as I want and I am getting impatient. So I'm going to go ahead and WILD. I was always afraid of the transition, because it would get loud and body sensations would be weird and things like that but now I'm willing to go through a highly unpleasant experience. I also realized that if I get good at this I can do this pretty much every night with a high success rate and it seems much more than DILD.

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## NyxCC

How did the WILD attempt go?

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## Ginsan

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I kept forgetting it... Maybe because I stopped caring for some weird reason, or real life got sufficiently interesting for me to stop caring about LD adventures. Maybe after this little exchange I will be reminded when I am about to sleep and I will report on what happened.

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## Ginsan

Hey NyxCC, I'm a bit desperate. I had a nice little period where I was getting lucid almost every day. Like 5-7 lucid dreams a week. For a few weeks. And now I'm not getting lucid, like not at all. Maybe a few minutes once a week. Also, the frequent LDs were 5-10 minutes and I wasn't very clear minded, sometimes semi-lucid. I was very happy about it, thinking it would improve slowly and I'd be having crazy adventures every night.  :Sad:   Well I was wrong.

So I'm going to start doing reality checks again. And repeat this phrase:  "Next time I'm dreaming, I look at my hands and realize I'm dreaming."

I'm also going to read Sensei's dream journaling tips. Also, I've been writing in my journal (with paper and pencil, it's a lot better than my phone, it's revolutionary! which is a little ironic, since a phone is more modern  :tongue2: ) every day, for about 15-45 minutes a day. My recall is alright, but it seems to be hovering at about the same place. But I know from years of experience that progress is not straightforward, I must keep trying and remain patient. I remember 1 or 2 dreams, about 15-30 minutes of content usually.

Couuld you give me some tips? I thought I didn't need a mentor anymore but now I do. Also, nice talking to you again. I admire you for still helping out people  :smiley:

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## Ginsan

Hey NyxCC, I'm a bit desperate. I had a nice little period where I was getting lucid almost every day. Like 5-7 lucid dreams a week. For a few weeks. And now I'm not getting lucid, like not at all. Maybe a few minutes once a week. Also, the frequent LDs were 5-10 minutes and I wasn't very clear minded, sometimes semi-lucid. I was very happy about it, thinking it would improve slowly and I'd be having crazy adventures every night.  :Sad:   Well I was wrong.

So I'm going to start doing reality checks again. And repeat this phrase:  "Next time I'm dreaming, I look at my hands and realize I'm dreaming."

I'm also going to read Sensei's dream journaling tips. Also, I've been writing in my journal (with paper and pencil, it's a lot better than my phone, it's revolutionary! which is a little ironic, since a phone is more modern  :tongue2: ) every day, for about 15-45 minutes a day. My recall is alright, but it seems to be hovering at about the same place. But I know from years of experience that progress is not straightforward, I must keep trying and remain patient. I remember 1 or 2 dreams, about 15-30 minutes of content usually.

Couuld you give me some tips? I thought I didn't need a mentor anymore but now I do. Also, nice talking to you again. I admire you for still helping out people  :smiley: 

I'm also going to read some stuff here and there on DV.

edit: this is the next day. I just had a really cool lucid dream. 7/10   a 10 being the best lucid dream I've ever had

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## NyxCC

Good to see you Ginsan and congrats on the ld! 

Are you still in need of tips? How have your practices been? Were you doing them often or decided to drop them altogether? I know this can have an influence on lucidity even though it doesn't show immeditely. If that's the case then you just need to make a nice plan for yourself and follow it. 

You can go back and read your own awesome lucids to remind yourself of all those moments and that they are totally attainable because you've been there before.  :smiley:

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## Ginsan

I'm not motivated anymore so I'll just chill for now.

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