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Hi all,
I'm a complete newbie to this forum. Never before had I even thought to look for a forum for lucid dreaming. That little bit of illogical behavior should have been a dreamsign to me, I guess and ... rc time ... am I dreaming? This text isn't swimming around, so I guess I'm not dreaming. Shoot. Could have used some good dream sex.
Although I have a pretty good deal of experience with lucid dreaming, I haven't done it in quite a while. Traveling and unreliable sleep cut into my practice many moons ago, and I got out of it. Not out of choice, but of necessity. To be honest, I don't know how many LDs I've had. For a while, I could have many a week, and sometimes many a night. I had run into a rut during my last bout of practice: low quality lucidity. Aware, but not as aware I'd like to be. I think some of that behavior was due to laziness (like many low-lucidity waking people I know!)
I've been lurking on this list a couple of days. Reading through the tutorials and whatnot has given me the urge to get started again. There was one tut on DEILDs (I think) that really got me thinking about LDing again. I had stumbled upon the same thing myself, but never developed it as well as the author of the tutorial.
So, now I wrap my white-belt on again, and start with pushups, stretching, and firing up a fresh dream journal.
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and by the way: what's that little "warn: " thingy?
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Hey folded! :D Welcome to the forum! Glad you found the place. I've come to find out that there's an online forum for just about anything you can think of. But obviously DV is the best... :content:
All members can see their own warning level. The warning level system is how the moderators keep track of problem members.
Thanks for posting an intro. See you around! :)
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Hi folded, welcome to DV!
I was wondering, since you had a lot of success previously, what techniques you were using?
Good luck and good dreams!
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Hi Moonbeam,
Well, first of all, I had a couple SP dreams and lucid dreams when I was a kid. So, I knew this stuff was for real when I chanced upon reading about it around 5 or 6 years ago. That helps with the believability factor. When you know its real, and you've experienced it, you sort of understand that "hey! I can really do this!"
I started off with Casteneda's method: develop steely intent, the "looking at your hands" RC, and not staring to hard at anything lest you lose lucidity. (I had not read LaBerge at that point, and I did not know about him.) Back then, because I was not really following a structured program, I had maybe an LD once a month, maybe once every two months, maybe not even that. Also, there were not online communities that I knew about at the time, so there was no support for it. After a while, I lost interest.
Then, I found LaBerge's Lucid Dreaming when going through a book store. Quantum-friggin'-leap compared to what I had gone through before. Before getting through my first week's dream journal I had a couple short LD's which got me fired up. At that time, I was getting into a new job that required a long commute (which I still have, by the way), so I don't think I was going at full-steam. But, when I hit my stride around 3 to 4 years ago, I was having one to two LDs a week, and good ones. Sometimes more, and sometimes multilples over a night. Then, my job started having me travel a lot. The jet lag and sheer exhaustion from the job in general killed that phase after about 9 solid months.
A couple of years ago, I started again. That time, I knew for certain that LDs were just a natural phenomenon, there was no mystery to it. Also, I didn't have to learn about it, it was "old news". I was not traveling so much, my commute was slightly better, so I was not as exhausted, but some of the fire had gone out of LDing because it was no longer fresh and new. So, it took me a little longer to "ramp up" to a strong practice. However, it was my strongest phase yet. Multiple LDs per night, many nights per week. To the point where I did not want to enter anything into my DJ so I could avoid losing time in dreamland, and so that I would not feel tired in the AM. (DJing does make you groggy the next morning.)
But, I think that not keeping up with the DJ was my downfall. My recall started to fade. And, with it, my control. I had more dreams where I was semi-lucid, unable to remember the techniques for sharpening lucidity, but lucid enough to do stupid things. Dreamsex and flying are good, but after a while I wanted to do other things and I never remembered to. It was eye-opening in this way: I thought I was lucid, but I wasn't really. I found parallels in the waking world, such as: I thought I was paying attention to what someone told me, but I didn't remember it right.
In my last phase I did have some really important breakthroughs, though. I found how to approach my "fear" dream characters, which really inspired me. I was exploring the sense of dream tactility. I became pretty good at going back into the dream from the waking state, and also at passing through solid barriers to change the dream.
So, here I am again, starting almost-new.
wilds and dilds were what I used. But, after a while, the no-technique method worked (I just knew that I would have LDs).
And I know now that I must keep a dream journal and maintain a steady stream of small tasks to keep me sharp.
Hoped my blathering helped.
