reverse RCing?

[Conkeen]

I don't really understand this so try to help me out for some reason i keep having lucid dreams when i don't RC that much in the day but if i RC like crazy for a week nothing happens so what's the logic behind this? i know its not a dancing banana is it?

[Uriel]

Perhaps when you do too many RCs you put too much stress on yourself to lucid dream. Maybe when you aren't too worried about reality checking you relax more and thus have more lucids. Just a guess. RCs usually help me.

[Excessaccess]

I just wrote a long, detailed response to your post. Unfortuneately, for reasons I will not go into here, it was erased. Therefore, I will give you an abbreviated version of what I wrote.. Say for one week you are determined to have a lucid dream. You reality check every few hours, you read about it all day (whenever you can), and it's generally all you're thinking about it. You plan to have your lucid dream on Friday, for example, and Friday night you get everything set up, lay down to sleep with the best intentions and then Boom it's Saturday morning and you don't even remember a single dream! Now you're frustrated and decide all of the reality checks you've been doing, all of the reading and thinking about lucid dreaming aren't working, so you "give up." The next week you don't RC as much, you don't read about it much (if at all), and you are simply "too busy" to care about dreaming. Then later in the week, Thursday and Friday night WAHMMO! two intense lucid dreams! Now you're all pumped up and you think "Hey! Two lucids in a row! I'm a fucking mad-man! I'm a natural!" From this point on, you're all about lucid dreaming again. You're doing reality checks, reading about lucid dreaming and you decide: "I'm gonna go for a lucid dream on Friday!" Now all through the week you're pumping yourself up, getting ready for the awesome lucid dream you know you're going to have on Friday. Then what happens? Friday night: nothing.. See the pattern? You're building yourself up for your dreams and when you don't get what you want, you let off the effort and relax a little and then you'll get your results. Now, I think both parts of that cycle are important. You have to put that effort into it, but you've also got to be able to relax and not put pressure on yourself to do what it is you want to do. Essentially what I'm saying is (or at least what I tried to say was) that all the effort you put into it isn't wasted. It just may take time for it to produce results and it's more often then not, and this is true for me, when you least expect it. Secondly, and this is something I just thought about (and a lot simpler), maybe it's a kind of thing for you where you think that you're not going to have LDs during those weeks of intense effort, so you don't. Then when you're not doing as many RCs and those kinds of things, you think that you'll probably have an LD, so you do. A placebo effect, I guess. Well, this wasn't as abbreviated as I intended it to be, but there it is. I hope it helps you.

[Conkeen]

I just wrote a long, detailed response to your post. Unfortuneately, for reasons I will not go into here, it was erased. Therefore, I will give you an abbreviated version of what I wrote.. Say for one week you are determined to have a lucid dream. You reality check every few hours, you read about it all day (whenever you can), and it's generally all you're thinking about it. You plan to have your lucid dream on Friday, for example, and Friday night you get everything set up, lay down to sleep with the best intentions and then Boom it's Saturday morning and you don't even remember a single dream! Now you're frustrated and decide all of the reality checks you've been doing, all of the reading and thinking about lucid dreaming aren't working, so you "give up." The next week you don't RC as much, you don't read about it much (if at all), and you are simply "too busy" to care about dreaming. Then later in the week, Thursday and Friday night WAHMMO! two intense lucid dreams! Now you're all pumped up and you think "Hey! Two lucids in a row! I'm a fucking mad-man! I'm a natural!" From this point on, you're all about lucid dreaming again. You're doing reality checks, reading about lucid dreaming and you decide: "I'm gonna go for a lucid dream on Friday!" Now all through the week you're pumping yourself up, getting ready for the awesome lucid dream you know you're going to have on Friday. Then what happens? Friday night: nothing.. See the pattern? You're building yourself up for your dreams and when you don't get what you want, you let off the effort and relax a little and then you'll get your results. Now, I think both parts of that cycle are important. You have to put that effort into it, but you've also got to be able to relax and not put pressure on yourself to do what it is you want to do. Essentially what I'm saying is (or at least what I tried to say was) that all the effort you put into it isn't wasted. It just may take time for it to produce results and it's more often then not, and this is true for me, when you least expect it. Secondly, and this is something I just thought about (and a lot simpler), maybe it's a kind of thing for you where you think that you're not going to have LDs during those weeks of intense effort, so you don't. Then when you're not doing as many RCs and those kinds of things, you think that you'll probably have an LD, so you do. A placebo effect, I guess. Well, this wasn't as abbreviated as I intended it to be, but there it is. I hope it helps you. thanks for taking the time to write that i think i get it now thanks.