Thread: You know you're a dreamer when...

Originally Posted by FryingMan

I meant "this last year of lucid dreaming practice", so that's an average a bit lower than that covering 330-ish days. But I do recall about 7-8 on average, my true count is probably closer to 1.8K or even 2K. I'm a bit down from where I used to be, waking 4 times per night with 4 dreams each waking is not hard to get to 16 per night. But I haven't been able to maintain that frequency of waking, however, I prefer recently to be asleep at night . But regardless, I always work on recall. Basically I put most of my night time practice into recall. I always reach for recall on every waking, and think over and over the dreams until I recall as much/many of them as I can. Usual stuff: don't move, relax, quietly think about the dreams. I'll spend 10-15 minutes easily on each waking working to recall the previous cycle's dreams.

Some of my dreams tend to be short and unrelated to each other, just a minute or two, I usually count those as "dreams" rather than just "scenes." So it's possible to have many "dreams" within one REM cycle.

edit: And big non-lucid recall is awesome and all, but I'd love to be converting more and more of those to lucids....still working on that.

Ooh, that makes much more sense LOL. Thanks for the recall tips, dream recall has always been my worst skill (if lucid dreaming had a 'set of skills') so I'm aiming to improve it. I'll admit I've always been the lazy type when it comes to dream journaling, and recall hasn't been of my topmost priorities either when I wake up, but these are bad habits I'm aiming to get rid of as I get back into lucid dreaming.

Out of curiosity, do you wake up frequently naturally, or from an alarm? I aim to wake up in the middle of the night as well for WILD/DEILD but I do it naturally due to my parents being a couple rooms over. It always seems to end up late into my sleep cycle (early morning), so I'm wondering if it would be possible to keep up this natural awakening but be able to do it multiple times a night.

Originally Posted by Maxis

Ooh, that makes much more sense LOL. Thanks for the recall tips, dream recall has always been my worst skill (if lucid dreaming had a 'set of skills') so I'm aiming to improve it. I'll admit I've always been the lazy type when it comes to dream journaling, and recall hasn't been of my topmost priorities either when I wake up, but these are bad habits I'm aiming to get rid of as I get back into lucid dreaming.

Out of curiosity, do you wake up frequently naturally, or from an alarm? I aim to wake up in the middle of the night as well for WILD/DEILD but I do it naturally due to my parents being a couple rooms over. It always seems to end up late into my sleep cycle (early morning), so I'm wondering if it would be possible to keep up this natural awakening but be able to do it multiple times a night.

I wake naturally or from remee, it's a nice gentle alarm. I don't always wake multiple times per night, especially the last 6 months. In the beginning it was easy and fascinating and new and I would wake up generally at least 4 times per night just by setting intention to do so. After about 3 months of that I sort of collapsed being tired a lot and stopped the frequent wakings. I find it a bit harder now to wake up during the night, even when I'm caught up on sleep. Part of my avoiding night wakings came from frequent middle of the night insomnia doing MILD/WILD/SSILD, and I had to teach myself how to fall back asleep a few times.

The good news is that I have succeeded and generally can always fall back asleep given sufficient time and discipline (it's hard work falling asleep when you're alert! It takes discipline, it's basically meditation).

Since I stopped trying to wake up during the night so much, but I didn't want to sacrifice recall, I started trying to develop keeping a running/growing list of dreams accumulated mentally on each waking when I'm too lazy to record. Every time I wake up I'd run over the list again to refresh them and add the new ones to it. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. Recording (voice recorder is best) on every waking is the path to the most recall and the most detailed. But it takes it's toll on sleep time, and I find that both recalling *and* recording leaves me wide awake, and it can take 40 minutes or more to fall asleep again.

But all that work has paid off -- sometimes (like 2 nights ago) I have epic long continuous multi-scene recall. And even without the super long ones I have a bunch of shorter scenes, every single night.

More and more I'll remember/experience dreams as waking memories, "you mean *that* was a dream!?". That's cool. And hopefully a sign of increasingly frequent LDs.

edit: I should quality "wake naturally" with "by setting intention to do so." I stopped setting intention to wake up after every dream for a few months and it's taking quite a while to get back into it.

...when in the middle of a fight, your partner throws his/her last attempt to call your attention saying something like "you and your lucid dreaming stuff"!!!

( blessed are those whose partner share the same interest in lucid dreaming)

when you spend your weekends on this website even thoughyou know it won't help your ld frequency you want to acheive in any way, shape, or form

Awesome FryingMan!! Really impressive man!
Getting a good recall is one of my long term goals also. Did you use mantras for setting the attention?
Unfortunately experienced LD with really crappy recall the next morning so I definitely want to prevent that from happening again..

Originally Posted by lucidmats

Awesome FryingMan!! Really impressive man!
Getting a good recall is one of my long term goals also. Did you use mantras for setting the attention?
Unfortunately experienced LD with really crappy recall the next morning so I definitely want to prevent that from happening again..

Yes I always set intention at night, right out of LaBerge:

ever night at bedtime:

"I have interesting and meaningful dreams" (modified somewhat, sometimes, tailored to, uh, particular dream goals ) (sometimes I skip this one)

"I remember my dreams" (and sometimes adding "...completely, from beginning to end" / "...vividly") (I always do this, and for several minutes at least)

"I wake up after every dream, remain still, recall, and record" (I've let this one slide recently but I'm working it back in, especially now for the competition)

"When I'm dreaming, I realize I'm dreaming" (lucidity mantra), or just "dream....dream...dream" while visualizing last night's dream scenes (mini-MILD)


The best way to remember a dream is to recall and record it immediately upon waking from it. Mental recall only doesn't usually wake me up too much, but recording (even just voice recording) usually wakes me up, sometimes completely, but it's a price to pay for maintaining all the little details.

Nice, I like the meaningful dreams part
Thank you I will try that tonight! I used some mantras before yours seem very well thought through!
I just downloaded a nice voice recording app which instantly uploads my recordings in my dropbox, works like a charm.
I hope I get the waking up a couple times a night part right, that would be really helpful. Not only with recall, but with SSILD also which works really well for me
Good luck tonight!

You occasionally avoid mirrors because of unpleasant past dream experiences

Every time you run into someone you have kissed in a dream you have trouble looking them in the eye without thinking about it. ...Even if you know they don't actually have a snakelike tongue, the thought is still there.

Sometimes you wish (even for a moment) that your waking life could be as exciting and unpredictable as a non-lucid dream...where it could rain orange soda or lavender ice cream exists and somehow that's okay.

Just read this last post on this page - and I have to say I'm all for lavender ice-cream - I can almost taste it in my imagination, and it's great!!
While we're at it - lilac ice cream would be an idea as well, maybe!

• You know, you are a dreamer, when you can look back on taking a hearty bite from a table, and it tasted like salted nuts! Or on munching away on a sandal having a hue of strawberry. And when you're not trying to keep that secret, but use the next opportunity to proudly tell the dreaming internet about it!

• Also when you listen to an instructive podcast on your hobby, and come to find out that there exists a stabilisation-tech which consists of making out with the ground! Courtesy Xanous, of course!

• And when you have lots of memories about beautiful, sexy people wanting to make out with you and you keep reacting with stuff like - nope thanks - what I really want to do is pushing my hand through a solid object and later rip my heart out of my chest-cavity in mid-flight in order to throw it at a DC for Valentines day (yepp - that happened courtesy Ophelia)!

you know you are a dreamer when you constantly keep trying to affect waking life with your expectations

When you live in israel and you're happy your city is getting bombed in the middle of the night because you can do WBTB.

Originally Posted by Kaenthem

edited out by staff

Dude, wtf?
I didnt come here to discuses politics or represent israel or whatever, just told something that happened to me 2 days ago when the bombing woke me up and i was kind of happy inside because
when it was over i did WBTB. if you have anything to say about it pm me, this thread is definitely not the place.

God hahahah I relate so much to all of them. I feel specially weird when I tell people I like to go to bed early so I can have a good night's sleep and they are like "meh, you are like a child. I always go to bed super late and sleep for 6 hours or less, it's a waste of time". Boy, you have no idea what you're missing on...

You know you are a dreamer when you feel the urge to talk about dreams but bite your tongue because most people don't care (at least, not that I know).

You know you are a dreamer when you go out partying and you refuse to drink much because a hangover means little to no dream recall.

A few off the top of my head.

You know you're a lucid dreamer when:

You buy things just because they have the word "dream" on them or remind you of lucid dreaming.

Your book collection looks like it should belong to a psychologist.

All your clocks and watches are digital for reality checks.

You look up at the sky often and daydream about where you'd fly if it was a LD.

You've learnt a whole load of ways to reality check as stealthily as you can.

You're a bit bored of explaining what a lucid dream is.

You know you are a dreamer when you wake up in the morning and are as quiet as possible so no one wakes up. Then you experience your well-deserved WILD!

...when senseless noise from your brothers in the early morning is a tragedy.

...when you think of a place to visit other than the beach in a LD because you have already teleported to it countless times!

...when you are close to tears one morning because you don't remember any dreams from that night.

...when you talk with friends about something impossible that you all wished you could do. Then you think to yourself, I can, in fact, do that!

Originally Posted by LucidMoon

You've learnt a whole load of ways to reality check as stealthily as you can.

You're a bit bored of explaining what a lucid dream is.

Exactly. I was telling someone about lucid dreaming about a month ago and they were like, "huh. whatever."
and I was like, "How does none of this sound cool to you!"

Some people though.

Lucidmoon, I feel ya on a lot of these, but not the digital clocks. Analogs are hectic in my dreams!

When you watch guardians of the galaxy and are taking notes on who you should fight first.

When you feel sad for being up at one in the morning when you could've been attempting to get a lucid dream after ages of not.

Originally Posted by Jacob46719

...when the last thing you ever want to do is have "fun"(party, video games, etc.) all night. Instead, you want as much sleep as possible, as lucid dreaming is way better.

...when you try to WILD right when you go to bed initially(even though you already know it's really hard) because you forgot how to sleep normally.

...when you're facepalming because it's 12am and you're not in bed.

The first and last ones, every single time, thank God I'm not alone.

I can relate to so many of these lol.

...When you appreciate your cat waking you up in the middle of the night.

... When the worst part about going back to school is that it might mess up your LDing routine! (No more long WBTBs )

You know you're a dreamer when you, for some unknown reason, keep trying countless times to type with your mind ".75." in an invisible keyboard but the god damn floating screen in front of your eyes keeps showing ".175." in stead.

You know you're a dreamer when you see this picture….



And you're first and only thought is "OMG I'm *SO* dreaming"

You know you are a dreamer when you go to sleep just for dreaming

When you do a reality check in public and people think you're crazy