Thread: Who started "Lucid Dreaming" & "Dream Control" on their own Naturally?

Another old-timer here -- at least by Internet standards! Like so many of you, my first lucid episode happened during a childhood nightmare. I was only four or five, but the nightmare was so vivid I never forgot it. Just when I thought I was on the verge of being killed by an enormous dinosaur, absolutely terrified, I suddenly realized that I was dreaming and instinctively woke myself up. But then things got even scarier in a way, because although I knew I was awake in my bed, try as I might I couldn't open my eyes! I struggled with my eyelids for what seemed like ages (though it was probably just a few seconds) before getting them open.

Since then I always had a smattering of lucids and semi-lucids spontaneously throughout my life. As a kid I was obsessed with trying to bring dream objects back into waking life, which always seemed like a plausible idea during the dream itself, but never worked of course. When I realized I was on the verge of waking, I would clutch some dream treasure tightly in my hand, vowing not to let it go... and then woke up empty-handed. I was always so disappointed, but I kept trying.

All this time I had never heard of lucid dreaming -- this was before the Internet -- so I just took it for granted that some dreams were different, and it never occurred to me that lucidity could be intentionally induced. On the occasions that I realized I was dreaming, I would usually fly for fun or simply admire the vivid details of the environment, but I didn't have any kind of experimental ambitions. Again, I didn't even realize lucidity was a "thing." In that respect, you kids growing up in the Internet age have at least one advantage! Too much information may be stultifying and over-program our expectations, but too little information can also trap us within a limited set of assumptions and lead to a lot of missed opportunities, as I can sadly attest.

My parents had books on astral projection, so for a while in my teens I got obsessed with trying to make that happen. Then one time it actually worked! I was so delighted with my success... I floated all around the house and yard observing everything... but then I woke up and realized it had really been a dream. I guess after this experience I concluded that most astral projection was probably just dreaming. I felt so cheated that I turned my back on it.

It was only many years later, probably after encountering LaBerge's book, that I looked back and realized that what I had interpreted as a failed astral projection had actually been a successful WILD! It made me want to go back in time and repeatedly kick my teenage self in the shins for having such a backwards perspective. This was the consequence of a bad paradigm based on too little information. Had I been trying to "lucid dream" instead of "astral project" -- had I even heard of "lucid dreaming" at the time -- I would have been pleased with my success and been motivated to continue. On the other hand, even if I had been a bit more credulous and let myself be convinced that I had astral projected for "real," I might have continued down that path and made progress with lucid dreaming as well. Instead, I ended up doing neither.

In my twenties, after I came across LaBerge's book, I finally had a name for all those really cool dreams. I was excited by the prospect that they could be induced, but I dabbled with the techniques a bit and didn't have much luck. Eventually I got distracted with waking life and forgot about it again for a while. I would still have the rare spontaneous lucid, but not frequently enough to supply much motivation for a deliberate practice.

It was only in my late thirties that everything changed suddenly, like a bolt out of the blue. It was a period of great uncertainty in my life, as I had just finished a very long stint in grad school and was now on the job market. One night while lying awake in bed with a touch of insomnia, I suddenly felt my body seized as though by some outside force, whirl through the air in a violent figure-eight, and then I was flung into the most extraordinary, vivid, fully lucid dream I had ever had by that point, in which I found myself navigating a labyrinth. After I woke up the next day, I was like, "Holy shit! Lucid dreaming! I remember that! I need to look into this!!"

That was only a few years ago, so of course the Internet was in full swing, and I had an Amazon account, and information was abundant both online and in print. So I bought LaBerge's book again (not sure whatever happened to my old copy) and a bunch of others, read up about it online, even formed an account on here (which I then promptly forgot about for a few years) and started practicing in earnest. I've been pleased with the results, but I still always naggingly wonder what it would have been like if I'd had the good sense to make this a bigger part of my life when I was younger.

So I'm not exactly a "natural" like some people on here, who were clever enough to figure out how to get there on their own. But it's always been a minor part of my life on some level, until suddenly a few years ago it abruptly became a major part of my life, and has been ever since.

My first couple of lucid dreams (a few years ago) were accidental. I accidentally became lucid the first time and did some action that turned my dream into a nightmare. However, because of this, there was a long vacation where I had about 1 or 2 lucid dreams every week. Somewhere before or after that (don't remember) I found another lucid dreaming forum.

Well, I guess I kinda did find out about it by myself. There was this time when I became kinda obsessed with dreams, I think I was about 12 years old or something. They were so cool to me, I always wondered what dream the next night had in store for me. And sometimes I would be aware that I am dreaming. I usually would try to float in some way, I remember that most of the time I would try doing a "triple jump" like Mario does ni Super Mario 64 to fly with the wing cap.
A lot of times I would go to bed excited to be aware that I was dreaming. I would think "Okay, this time I'm gonna remember to notice I'm dreaming" and wake up like "D'oh, I forgot again!". Sometimes I would have success but it was quite rare. Them I read in a magazine about it and was like "Oh, it's the thing I do!". The article spoke about classes people took to have lucid dreams and talked about how they could do anything. I didn't want to take classes tough. I felt like that was something I could learn on my own (by the way I don't think I still knew it was called lucid dreaming).
Then some years later I read about LDs on a forum. Someone on the thread linked to dreamviews. I came here and learned a lot. I still have much to learn but have way more knowledge/experience about LDs than I used to have then. I just gotta learn how to use it better.
For dream control I didn't know much before coming here. As I said I would mostly try to fly by jumping. Now I know lot's of techniques but usually end up asking the DCs for help as that usually seens to work.