Jakro Goes Hardcore Into LDs

Hi. I'm Jakro. That's it, let's go into the dream... No, really maybe you want to know briefly who the hell is this.

I've been dabbling with lucid dreaming since about 2005, but only started it taking more seriously in 2009. At first my results were encouraging, peaking in July 2009 when I had 8 lucid dreams in a month. I was like "holy shit, this is awesome, and it's only going to get better. Fast forward a couple of years and I'm like "what happened? It was supposed to be awesome!" During the past year my total lucid count was 14. That's pathetic! Worst thing is, that they've all been short and poor in quality. My last quality LD was probably back in 2009. So what did really happen?

Simply put I started coasting more and more and didn't put in as much effort as in the first few months. I was lazy. I've not made concerted effort for lucid dreams in a while. I've kept dream journal and still am keeping, but my recall has been only so-so. The times I've actually put in some effort have been mostly frustrating due to lack of results.

But that's about to stop. This year, I'm going to have my best year of lucid dreams ever. To support that effort I'm starting to write a DJ here as well. I've been lurking in Dreamviews for quite a while, occasionally posting here and there, but not really being active. I have had a DJ in my own forum in Finnish, but I'm going to make a habit of writing here as well every evening to get my minds focused back into lucid dreams in night.

For the most part I'm going to write last night's dream here, but I still have often nights, where I don't remember much. So then I'm going to instead revisit some of my "classic" dreams from over the years put them up on here.

We'll start with one of those right away, as I didn't remember much from last night.

Jakro "Classics" - My First Recorded Lucid
Date: January 31th, 2009
Lucid: Yes
Method: WILD

It's funny that my first lucid was WILD because I've only had three of them over the course of last three years. This is not really that special dream except that it was, you know, the first one. There have been some short ones before that but I've not recorded them, so this is what you get.

What happened prior it was that I was seriously sleep-deprived from staying up over 24 hours. My sleeping rhythm was completely upside down, so I had to stay up for a long stretch to fix it. In the afternoon I tried to watch soccer while tired, but fell asleep. I woke up four hours later and get up to move to bed to get the rest of my sleep in. I had been reading about lucid dreaming a lot and I was aware of WILD technique. I knew that I was so tired, that nothing was going to stop me from falling asleep (and given that it was still kind of early to go in bed, I wouldn't even had minded if I wouldn't), so I tried my hardest to stay conscious through the stages of falling asleep.

Luckily for me they were pretty short and I did indeed fall asleep. The hypnagologic stage was short and I soon found myself in my bed in complete darkness. I had stayed calm, but a bit excited during the experiences in the hypnagologic state, but I didn't know whether I woke up or not. I had felt shaking during the hypnagologic state and then as it ceased I had seen pictures and thought to myself that "I'm totally tripping balls" (that's the exact wording on my journal).

But yeah, I was laying in my bed in dark room. I got up and felt how everything seemed real enough. I tried turning on the light. It didn't work. A-ha! I had just read that often in people's dreams lights don't work. I was becoming increasingly sure that I was indeed dreaming. But I'm always very careful with this, as the stuff you often do in LDs is either illegal or lethal, usually both.

Not this time though. Looking at the clock and away and then seeing the time transform completely confirmed for me that it was a dream, but I wasn't prepared for this. I didn't expect to become lucid so soon after starting seriously trying! I was so in awe of the dreamworld, that I mostly just observed. Not that there's anything bad in that, I've done that often since and it's fun on it's own, just to look at the vast and complicated world and detail that your brain has created.

As for reality checks, I wasn't done though. I did one final test - the nose test. All the doubt faded... Well, almost all. I ventured to our kitchen and everything looked like there someone was amidst of cleaning the room. Everything was stacked up in one place. I went to my parents bedroom, still not 100 % sure that I was indeed dreaming.

I walked into the room. My sister and my mom were there. They were watching television. Both of them had matching camouflage jeans on and I've never seen anything like that on either of them. My sis was also a few years younger than what she really was at the time. 0kay, finally I was sure that I'm dreaming, stuff like that just doesn't happen. Then I woke up.

Nothing spectacular in the end, but an encouraging start to my lucid dreaming journey that stalled a year later and started stagnating. I have some more awesome dreams to share later and hopefully I'll start dreaming ones as well. Anyway, I'll go to sleep now. This post at least put my mind into the right place for sleeping.