Thread: Ebtn's cookbook

I'm too tired now but tomorrow I'll post on why I'm using the technique I'm using.

First off, I'm well aware of the idea that just sticking to a particular method for months will eventually trigger consistent lucid dreams. However, I am impatient.

The reason I chose a DILD technique and not a WILD technique was because of ADA. The last time I attempted to establish LD-routines I tried ADA. That same night I had an LD. However, I never had another one for weeks. Then waking life stuff came and I put LDing on hold.

My latest attempt on trying to establish LD-routines started 2015-10-10. Here's the interesting part. I tried ADA again and that very first night I had an LD. I also didn't have another LD for 2 weeks. I've have a total of 5 LD-routine establishing attempts and no other technique has done this for me and especially not any WILDS. So I figure there's at least something to DILDS. If not, I still gain by working the habit I've already started vs jumping to a MILD technique. I'm also not interested in mindfulness meditation. Because again, months.

I don't use ADA now since it requires months of practice to pull off without making huge waking life sacrifices. Who knows how much time it takes to trigger LDs consistently. So I read a bunch of threads to try to find more fundamental and effective. I refuse affirmation/intention techniques. So far Sageous' memory thread fits my experience the most. The reason I don't question the dream is because according to my dream memory there's nothing to question. So my current focus is devising a method for improving my dream memory or regaining my waking life memory.

That's why I'm using the method in the OP. It's the only method so far that has actually made me question whether im dreaming or not. Remembering that you ate some really delicious meat but having a hard time remembering what kind of meat it actually was is an interesting experience. I'm still adding specifications to the method in the OP, reading Laberge's book about similar methods and other's people experiences with memory improvement.

Had an interesting experience last night with a tweak of the memory method. I saw way more HIs and managed to "stay conscious" more than I usually do. Towards the ending I had trouble knowing if I saw HIs or if I was dreaming. At this point I could feel my memory disappearing and I had trouble remembering thoughts I knew I had mere seconds ago. What I exactly did was to try to remember every sound, emotion, Hi, thought, feeling I had. When I experienced one of these I tried to remember it a few seconds after the experience.

I do not have the focus or discipline to add a WILD technique to my schedule but I'll keep doing to get used to HIs. It's also pretty fun without being effortful.

Hi Ebtn, and welcome to the DILD class! Some notes, based on what you wrote above:

Cultivating access to memory is, as Sageous writes, one of the fundamentals. So working on memory is bound to lead to increasing good results in your LD practice.

Impatience, IMO, is a hindrance to lasting progress. I well understand the "but I want lucid dreams NOW!" perspective. I used to have it in the beginning. It's a positive thing to have drive and motivation if it pushes you to add positives to your practice, but only if it doesn't lead to frustration and negative thoughts, which in an all-mental discipline like LDing can cause stalls and dry spells.

I think it's a good thing to be always evaluating your practice and to think about how to change things around to keep things fresh. As long as you always have your eye on the key fundamentals, the specifics of what you do don't matter so much.

In addition to memory, the other fundamentals are heightened self-awareness and dream recall/awareness. Find ways to work on these every day, even if just a little bit.

I'm not a fan of classical ADA. Instead of ADA, why not try being AAD (aware, all day)? Don't focus on being hyper aware of minute sense input, that's exhausting and has few (if any?) benefits to waking life. However, mindfulness and living in the present moment, paying attention on purpose, being "aware of your awareness," in addition to helping your dreaming practice, can also lead to a much more enjoyable and fulfilling waking life.

There are many practices that lead to increased LD chances on any particular night. WBTB is highly effective for most, try it out and see if you can find the sweet spot for you in terms of timing.

Instead of "adding WILDs to [your] schedule," why not just try paying more attention to your experiences in the night? It sounds a lot like what you were doing in your last post. The benefit to the paying attention/mindfulness approach is that you can do it both while awake and while falling asleep (and while being asleep, in dreams!).

The more you practice being "aware of your awareness," the more you'll want to keep being in this way. You'll catch yourself having "zoned out" more and more. I think this is the key to frequent LDs. It takes time to build up awareness, but it's a snowball that just keeps rolling and growing larger.

Good luck, and keep us informed about your progress, and let us know if you have any questions!

edit: I'm also a fan of Ctharlhie's threads. I have compiled a list of other threads I think are particularly important, you can see that in the DILD class folder, here's the link

Welcome Ebtn! I agree with FryingMan's input above and along the lines of taking a longer term approach I would highly suggest to find some practice(s) that you find enjoyable and/or beneficial to your waking life in order to keep the longer term, patient approach...otherwise you are likely to move on and come back to LD'ing years later like many people have done and wished they stuck to it originally once they finally realize what they were missing.

Is there an LD practice that you currently enjoy?? If not, exercise 3a (or your own variation) towards the bottom of the following post can be quite fun and is a good start towards fun practices: http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...ml#post2094560

Your best chance at faster results would be with WBTB and I prefer the water method instead of an alarm. You can pair it with SSILD or another technique of your choosing.

I hope you stick around & good luck!

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Hi Ebtn, and welcome to the DILD class! Some notes, based on what you wrote above:

Cultivating access to memory is, as Sageous writes, one of the fundamentals. So working on memory is bound to lead to increasing good results in your LD practice.

Impatience, IMO, is a hindrance to lasting progress. I well understand the "but I want lucid dreams NOW!" perspective. I used to have it in the beginning. It's a positive thing to have drive and motivation if it pushes you to add positives to your practice, but only if it doesn't lead to frustration and negative thoughts, which in an all-mental discipline like LDing can cause stalls and dry spells.

I think it's a good thing to be always evaluating your practice and to think about how to change things around to keep things fresh. As long as you always have your eye on the key fundamentals, the specifics of what you do don't matter so much.

In addition to memory, the other fundamentals are heightened self-awareness and dream recall/awareness. Find ways to work on these every day, even if just a little bit.

I'm not a fan of classical ADA. Instead of ADA, why not try being AAD (aware, all day)? Don't focus on being hyper aware of minute sense input, that's exhausting and has few (if any?) benefits to waking life. However, mindfulness and living in the present moment, paying attention on purpose, being "aware of your awareness," in addition to helping your dreaming practice, can also lead to a much more enjoyable and fulfilling waking life.

There are many practices that lead to increased LD chances on any particular night. WBTB is highly effective for most, try it out and see if you can find the sweet spot for you in terms of timing.

Instead of "adding WILDs to [your] schedule," why not just try paying more attention to your experiences in the night? It sounds a lot like what you were doing in your last post. The benefit to the paying attention/mindfulness approach is that you can do it both while awake and while falling asleep (and while being asleep, in dreams!).

The more you practice being "aware of your awareness," the more you'll want to keep being in this way. You'll catch yourself having "zoned out" more and more. I think this is the key to frequent LDs. It takes time to build up awareness, but it's a snowball that just keeps rolling and growing larger.

Good luck, and keep us informed about your progress, and let us know if you have any questions!

edit: I'm also a fan of Ctharlhie's threads. I have compiled a list of other threads I think are particularly important, you can see that in the DILD class folder, here's the link

Thank you for the very informative post, FryingMan

What you say is true and I needed to hear that. There's one thing to be effective and there's one thing to create states of mind that aren't conducive to lucidity.

Yes, it seems I have been too enamored with techniques lately. In all my haste I forgot about mindfulness. Mindfulness must be even more fundamental than memory or recall. Awareness of something comes before the memory of it. Mindfulness also benefits recall. At least in my experience.

I resumed my mindfulness meditation practice yesterday. I had 3 20m sessions, tried to maintain a mindful state for the rest of the night and RC'd everytime I wasn't mindful. So in average 1 RC/5m. I ended up remembering 2 dreams but enough details to almost fit 2 pages. That's 0.5 pages more than average. This might be a lucky fluke so I won't expect the same to happen tonight. I'll just continue with this. I also added the palm through finger RC. It felt easy to just tag it on as I noticed it's as effortless as the nose plug one.

I forgot to WBTB last night but I've prepared the water bottle so there's a gurantatee that I won't forget this time.

I was so focused on being mindful all day that I forgot about tailoring the memory technique. Right now being mindful takes alot of energy and I'll need to wait a day or two to see if I can think about any other techniques for the moment. I might even need to cut back on mindfulness. I also need to tailor a self-awareness technique. The one described by Sageous is too exhausting for me when I try to "wonder" on command.

I appreciate the links. I read all of them besides the dream stabilization/control ones. I'll read those when I'm used to my current routine and when I LD more.

Thanks for reading everything so far

Originally Posted by fogelbise

Welcome Ebtn! I agree with FryingMan's input above and along the lines of taking a longer term approach I would highly suggest to find some practice(s) that you find enjoyable and/or beneficial to your waking life in order to keep the longer term, patient approach...otherwise you are likely to move on and come back to LD'ing years later like many people have done and wished they stuck to it originally once they finally realize what they were missing.

Is there an LD practice that you currently enjoy?? If not, exercise 3a (or your own variation) towards the bottom of the following post can be quite fun and is a good start towards fun practices: http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...ml#post2094560

Your best chance at faster results would be with WBTB and I prefer the water method instead of an alarm. You can pair it with SSILD or another technique of your choosing.

I hope you stick around & good luck!

Hi FogelBoise, thanks for reading about my experience

Yes, I completely agree. That basically describes my last 3 attempts.

The technique I'm currently enjoy using is being mindful all day. I do a few mindfulness meditation sessions and try to mantain that state for the rest of the day. When I notice that I go out of the state I RC. This takes some energy but isn't as hard as 3a or SSILD for me. I've meditated for a few months it's something I'm used to. It feels pleasant at times and helps me focus when studying. As for 3a and SSILD. I interpret 3a as an intention/imagination/affirmation technique and I'm really bad at those. "Just imagining" something is true when I clearly feel the opposite takes exorbitant amounts of energy from me just to pull off once. SSILD is something I might add when I'm used to my current routine. I see it's benefits but do not have the discipline to

Thanks for reminding me about the water method. Had completely forgotten that one. I'll try it tonight.

Thanks for all the advice

You're welcome! Balancing the "brightness" of mindfulness vs. quietness of mindfulness so that it's not exhausting is something else that takes time. It takes more effort in the beginning, because our mind is not yet used to operating in that way, so the neural pathways are few and weak. Don't give up! We must build a new brain, a "lucid dreaming supercomputer!" .

Yes, awareness is one sense comes first: we remember that to which we pay attention. But we must remember to pay attention! So IMO they form a feedback loop, mutually reinforcing. Mindfulness creates strong memories so you can recall them. Also, our "self" exists in our memories. I relate these together here: FryingMan's Unified Theory of Lucid Dreaming: Pay Attention, Reflect, Recall -- Both Day and Night (also now in "Informative Links")

Ignore the attached files. Was going to use them to illustrate my week.

Update
-I now meditate once per day. Saves energy. Mindfulness all day isn't worth it yet.
-Segmented sleep for more energy. Monophasic sleep doesn't rest me. WBTB makes me tired.
-When DJ'ing I still write keywoards when I wake up in my notebook. Stream-of-consciousness style. When I then write them in more detail on the pc I have a new routine. I no longer read the notebook in detail. I skim it until I remember a gist of it and then write it out from memory. I also write stream-of-consciousness style. I'll leave out details if I ever feel its "too hard". It has been "hard" lately so I have a new mantra, "Is it better than nothing?" I've also noticed I get "warmed up" when I do this and eventually do add details.
-Had 2 LDs. In the 2nd I finally got to ask a DC "why don't I get lucid every night?". The DJ entry is here:
LD. Asking DC about lucidity - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views


Currently reading
http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-view...-things-2.html
Other people's experiences of talking with dream characters.
"Interesting facts about dreaming" articles with studies.

Things I have read
Exploring the world of LD. Specifically the chapters about recall, reflection and lucidity.
http://www.dreamviews.com/beyond-dre...-tutorial.html
http://www.dreamviews.com/lucid-chal...ml#post2144901

Originally Posted by FryingMan

You're welcome! Balancing the "brightness" of mindfulness vs. quietness of mindfulness so that it's not exhausting is something else that takes time. It takes more effort in the beginning, because our mind is not yet used to operating in that way, so the neural pathways are few and weak. Don't give up! We must build a new brain, a "lucid dreaming supercomputer!" .

Yes, awareness is one sense comes first: we remember that to which we pay attention. But we must remember to pay attention! So IMO they form a feedback loop, mutually reinforcing. Mindfulness creates strong memories so you can recall them. Also, our "self" exists in our memories. I relate these together here: FryingMan's Unified Theory of Lucid Dreaming: Pay Attention, Reflect, Recall -- Both Day and Night (also now in "Informative Links")

Totally agree that they're mutually reinforcing.

Yeah, I basically agree with the theory. On recollection, I'll wait with that. The energy for that is something I need experience for. I don't feel skeptical enough yet.

Congrats on the LDs! On WBTBs, is it during WBTB that you find tiring or is it the next day? Did you have the 2 LDs after WBTB? If you find it tiring you can reserve it for just times when you can sleep in or when you don't have a big demanding event the next day like a test. I think it is too powerful to give up on entirely though. What is the attached image?

Originally Posted by fogelbise

Congrats on the LDs! On WBTBs, is it during WBTB that you find tiring or is it the next day? Did you have the 2 LDs after WBTB? If you find it tiring you can reserve it for just times when you can sleep in or when you don't have a big demanding event the next day like a test. I think it is too powerful to give up on entirely though. What is the attached image?

Thanks! I feel tired the next day. I don't really feel rested with WBTBs so far (have had 3). I had both those LDs during the first sleep actually. Same goes for my latest three. So far I haven'd had any after the 2nd sleep. Yes, I'll definitely save WBTB for special occasions. The attached image was going to be a summary of how my week had been. Mid-post I realized the explanation of what "hill 1" and "valley 2" meant became unecessarily complex. So I edited the post and just couldn't be bothered with looking up how to delete those images.

Originally Posted by Ebtn

Thanks! I feel tired the next day. I don't really feel rested with WBTBs so far (have had 3). I had both those LDs during the first sleep actually. Same goes for my latest three. So far I haven'd had any after the 2nd sleep. Yes, I'll definitely save WBTB for special occasions. The attached image was going to be a summary of how my week had been. Mid-post I realized the explanation of what "hill 1" and "valley 2" meant became unecessarily complex. So I edited the post and just couldn't be bothered with looking up how to delete those images.

Some questions so that I may help further: How far into your sleep did you do the 3 WBTBs so far? How long did you stay up each time? How many hours into your sleep would you estimate that you had all of your LDs so far? Do you experience HH's very often?