Thread: A self called natural lucid dreamer on ADA

Hello Sageous,
First, sorry for the approximative english, i'm French
As a natural lucid dreamer I can't agree with you. A natural lucidity doesn't mean that you don't need anything ! It's a shortcut.
Also, I think there are a lot of different kinds of natural LDers : someone who has lucidly woken up from a nightmare a few times during childhood can proclame to be a lucid dreamer, as someone who has explored lucid dreaming for several years (without any knowing of the subject). But the two experiences are so different, the first one surely has some propensities, but they would be very reduced compared to the second one, who accumulated a lot of experiences.
That's how you have in one hand someone who have lucid dreams easily BUT need some techniques to have a decent frequency and quality, and on the other hand someone who can have lucid dreams with his hands in his pockets.

To go even deeper into the "not that simple", I will talk about my own experience. I had lucid dreams spontaneously since I was a child, first in nightmares that I woke up from, like a lot of natural lucid dreamers. But at 10 years old I began to experience lucidity in dreams that weren't scary, or "nightmarish", so I really began to harness this state, to make it last, to experiment things, to explore the possibilities and so on. I had a lot of LD's without seeking for them with any method.
When I discovered the word "lucid dream" (at 14), I learned about the different methods to induce it, that I didn't need as a natural, theorically. But it turned out that WBTB and MILD increased the occurrences of my lucid dreams. Also, even if it is not really a method, setting up lucid goals before going to sleep had an incidence on my ability to have a lucid dream, and to make it last. With this, I can surely tell people that setting up a lucid goal is important, and I hope they won't reply "what do you know about it, you're a natural, you don't even need it". True, I don't need it, but it still is very useful, and advisable
I also learned to WILD (my natural LDs were only DILD).
When I do nothing, I have lucid dreams. When I use some precise methods, I have more lucid dreams, ans mostly I have them in due time. They appear waaay less randomly ! That's part of how I know that I use a method right or wrong, and then I can help people with it.

I think natural lucid dreamers are very different people, with very different experiences (not all gifted lucid dreamers, some just had some natural LD's in the past, it doesn't mean that they can have LD's now by doing nothing), and you can't just say they don't need anything so they are not legitimate to give advices. It's putting all of them in the same box, whereas they sometimes have pretty much nothing in common.
I guide and support a lot of people on our french forum about lucid dreams, and I think having natural lucid dreams doesn't restrain me to have fondamental knowledge about different methods, and doesn't restrain the methods to have an effect on me, even if they are not indispensable for my lucid dreams to happen. The minor effects they have are enough to know if I do it right or not, and allows me to give advices to others As said before by VagalTone, the methods can improve a natural lucid dreamer abilities, and this "small" feedback is enough to make the natural LDers legitimate to give advices

But I understand what you mean when you talk about the "label" and how people can mislead it or exaggerate it. Some people doesn't make a difference between "having abilities and potential" and having natural lucid dreams.
Be sure that I don't consider people who pretend to be natural LDers in my reflexion, only the ones who really are.


(I hope what I wrote makes sense)