Thread: AquaBlitz11's Workbook (DILD class)

Recently, I have made my intro class workbook. However, as I (have to) dedicate myself to DILD, so here I am! My name I would prefer here is Aqua. Not much to say about my age, but I'm far younger than average here. Just a middle school student, soon to be in high school, 13, of course! I've got myself into Lucid Dreaming for... erm, just almost 3 weeks/a month. Anyways, faster is better, eh? Geez, do I have to tell my age? I cri.

Let's rewrite whatever I wrote on my intro class.

I used to have low dream recall rate, less than even one per month on average. It has improved to 3-4 decent recalls/week. Dream recalls on stressful days are non-existent, though. As everyone does, I also write dreams on dream journal, of course! Note all my dreams on my phone every dawn, and hope that I'll have time to actually write them in physical one. Dreams are also getting vivider every night.

Importantly, I never had lucid dreams before (at least what I can remember). It would be great if I can have it soon, or even now. I decided I'll rely on dream-induced with aids from mnemonic instead of sleep-killing WILD. Practices done are obviously reality checks, general awareness and dream recalling. I'm self-aware for most actions but I still can't concentrate well. It could be gaming/coding/reading or even writing this whole chunk that made me completely forgot what I'm doing! Still practicing this, not much of a problem. What worries me right now is my low amount of reality checks. I'm trying to increase it and put it to my habit, but I always forget to do so. Mindfulness is also a thing when doing short reality checks. So, I prefer thinking back in time, as that actually brings me to self-awareness and make me question everything that I've done. If there's anything I could do to provide better results, I'm happy to do so.

Why would I even try lucid dreaming? What's the point? They're questioning me as they don't understand the purpose. Only one who tries will feel the result. If you spend 1/3 of your life sleeping without consciousness, that must be time-wasting. Why not get conscious and use that time for some better things? (Wait. This 1/3 of lifetime comparison looks bloodily familiar. Aqua copies the idea, kill him.) Possibilities could be anything varying from messing around to high goals. Time to copy-paste things from my intro workbook.

Originally Posted by AquaBlitz11

Short-Term Goals:

- Of course, having my first LD and more, dream-induced though. (Environment here is hardly for WILD)
- Actually making reality checks my main habit/personality.
- Trying out some dream controls, messing up with my dreams.
- Preparing my dream control ability for my long-term goals.

Long-Term Goals:

- Understanding my personality, goals, feeling, etc. - how my subconscious really is.
- Understanding people psychologically, on their feelings. Better ways to learn friends and aid them.
- Composing songs (mainly piano pieces) in my dreams. (I usually compose songs on instinct whenever I'm daydreaming.)
- Being able to use lucid dreams as another ways to solve nagging real life problems. This can be almost anything. Whether school works I can't even think, or getting some ideas to use on my whatever. Who doesn't enjoy unlimited time to solve problems, with your creativity highly boosted and supported?
- Practicing piano (or any other things I do in real life) within lucid dreams.
- And of course, how did I miss this? Stress relief, doing some fun, typical things as other lucid dreamers would do: flying, etc.
- Creating imaginary world where I can live on with freedom.

Wow, that must be pretty high expectations, most people say. Well, I guess I better set up some goals for self-accomplishment for my motivation. I won't be this much obsessed if 1/3 of lifetime isn't this interesting.

That's all! Long introductory paragraphs are fun to write. Now, let's get to the topic on my status. As said, practices are common. Reality checks, self-awareness, dream recall. My dreams are vivider right now, but I don't recall having dreams on some days. Assignments have been stressing me out lately. Anyways, my practice starts being a habit in my dream. Not enough to turn my consciousness on though. Self-awareness? I'm not quite satisfied on how I let my emotions take control too much. Thoughts about lucid dreaming pop up and bring me to concentration on occasion, which I love it. Reality checks, I find myself doing physical ones quick, not mindfully enough. Better going on my mental RC. Call this paragraph a copy of above paragraphs.

I don't know what I should write right now. Will start writing my progress here if anything looks interesting/worse. I'm not sure what I should do with my intro class workbook right now though. I'll probably use that as progress tracker or general lucid dreaming information which doesn't fully dedicate to DILD. I'll try balancing things out for both classes!

Peace!

Hi Aqua, and welcome to the DVA DILD class!

It seems you have a pretty good handle on what you should be doing. Have you read any books like LaBerge's Exploring The World of Lucid Dreaming? If not, I'd recommend adding that to your reading material, it has a lot of good stuff in it. I got my first LD after one month of following LaBerge's program, and so have many others, it definitely works. He concentrates on DILD (MILD), and that I think is the best place for beginners to start.

There are 3 main components to lucid dreaming: 1) building high awareness/memory, 2) building high dream recall, and 3) proper timing. There are many many other things that come into play as well. You mentioned stress. I also have bad recall on nights when I'm stressed -- it's a good practice to leave your waking life worries behind when you get into bed: tell yourself that the best thing for your waking life responsibilities is to have a restful night (full of dreams!). Maybe use a day journal to note down all the things you need to do the next day before getting into bed, and do your best to forget them entirely when you get into bed.

When you wake up, don't start thinking about your day and all the things you have to do. Leave those thoughts until you actually physically get up out of bed and start your day. This way you'll train you brain over time that "in bed equals dreaming time and dream recall time!"

You've made some great progress on the dream recall already! Let's work on taking it to the next level: LaBerge recommends working only on recall at night until you reliably remember 1 dream every night for at least 7-10 nights in a row. At bed time, set intention (means repeat a statement to yourself and really believe it, feel how important it is to you), like: "I remember my dreams....I remember my dreams....I remember my dreams..." for several minutes. To build a lot of recall you may also want to experiment with setting intention to notice the wakings during the night: "I notice wakings during the night, remain still, and recall my dreams."

You can start day awareness work right away, though. It takes time to keep a continuous mindfulness. The best thing to build it is a strong desire to do so, constant practice, and patience. Our minds naturally seem to want to "zone out" a lot. We just need to learn to recognize it. We're not trying to "fight" it, only to pay attention quietly to notice when it happens. The more you pay attention, the more you'll find the times when you lose your mindfulness. When you do notice this, don't be upset, be happy! Noticing when you've been zoned out *is a moment of lucidity!* Celebrate those moments, be happy about them. Quietly bring your attention back to yourself and what you're doing. And just repeat this over and over and over. Over time, you'll find yourself "paying attention" more and more, and zoning out less and less.

It is awareness that prompts us to RC, not the other way around, so for more RCs, you need to be paying attention more, and thinking more about dreaming and if you're dreaming "right now" all through the day.

Daytime awareness and dream recall are related: once you start paying attention to waking life, you'll start paying attention to dream experiences as well, and once you do that it will be easier to recall your dreams.

Do you use an alarm in the morning? Alarms can be pretty rough on dream recall.

Other things like: getting enough sleep, regular bed times, and even getting enough exercise and eating a healthy diet can help with dream recall.

So as my first suggestion, I'd like you to set intention at bedtime to recall dreams, and when you find yourself awake, give yourself time to quietly stay still, eyes closed, and ask yourself "What was I just dreaming about?" Keep your mind quiet and receptive, and see if you start getting images or flashes or even whole dreams. Being excited and positive about remembering dreams really helps.

Also have a look through my >>dream recall tips<<, there's more detail in there about how to get really good at recalling your dreams.

So try that out for starters, and get back to us here in your workbook on how it's going!

As for last night's progress, I can feel more concentration on my mantras/intentions. Finally relaxing myself after stressful working hours. Though, I slept at 2 AM. That's tiring. I can't remember any dreams except a small fragment (was in Math class) before waking up. I might also want to say that external stimuli helps in this case. I was then awoken (false awakening) and noticed weirdness. Everything looked exactly the same comparing to my natural awakenings on 2-3 AM of other nights. That wasn't possible at all, since I heard my mom from external waking life. I decided to check the clock few times and it skipped for an hour every time I checked. How great, I smiled a bit to celebrate small moment of (low) lucidity. Unfortunately, I woke up right afterwards as I felt my physical body waking up with headache. I just hoped that I didn't feel so tired when I woke up, 6:30 AM. If I managed to think less about my headache, I might be able to recall a bit more. I'm glad I can finally get rested tonight.

For daytime awareness, I'm practicing on this. My mind flashes back to what I'm doing quite often now. I haven't done too much RC, but rather pay attention and think if what I'm doing is possible or not. For continuous awareness on what I'm doing, not long to point I can feel satisfied yet. Glad I can progress well with this whether ways. This has also reduced some stress I made upon myself for no reason. (Finally, I asked myself why I would even stress myself out.)

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Have you read any books like LaBerge's Exploring The World of Lucid Dreaming? If not, I'd recommend adding that to your reading material, it has a lot of good stuff in it.

I haven't started reading any books dedicated to LD yet. Will definitely read this whenever I have time to do so.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Do you use an alarm in the morning? Alarms can be pretty rough on dream recall.

No, not really. It's usually my mom who wakes me up in the morning. Though, I wake up naturally around 6-7 AM nowadays. One thing: small external stimuli tends to wake my consciousness up in my dream. That way, I can feel and actually remember my dreams. Most of time I remembered my dreams (before learning about LD) are on days I woke up like... noon? Sunlight is lovely. Not a thing I can rely on. It's a thing I might be able to take advantage of, if anything tries to make my physical body senses work.

Well, thank you for your suggestions and tips! Will definitely work for that and take my fruit of labor tonight or soon!

OK. I'd recommend to read LaBerge's ETWOLD sooner rather than later. It will give you a solid foundation on which to build your practice.

Originally Posted by AquaBlitz11

Geez, do I have to tell my age? I cri.

Welcome to the DILD workbooks Aqua and be proud of your age! How many people your age have all of these interesting goals?! Just try to look at the long term, slow and steady approach as best as you can. I honestly feel that you can learn so much more about yourself and others during the process and practices of lucid dreaming. And like FryingMan often says, enjoy your regular dreams as well. I think that they can also give you insight into various things going on in your subconscious besides just being interesting experiences often largely hidden from the average person. Stick with it and be rewarded

Originally Posted by FryingMan

OK. I'd recommend to read LaBerge's ETWOLD sooner rather than later. It will give you a solid foundation on which to build your practice.

Starting now as I've almost whole day today! Thanks for this book recommendation. It looks great.
Edit: Got to read this already. Great material!

Originally Posted by fogelbise

Welcome to the DILD workbooks Aqua and be proud of your age! How many people your age have all of these interesting goals?! Just try to look at the long term, slow and steady approach as best as you can. I honestly feel that you can learn so much more about yourself and others during the process and practices of lucid dreaming. And like FryingMan often says, enjoy your regular dreams as well. I think that they can also give you insight into various things going on in your subconscious besides just being interesting experiences often largely hidden from the average person. Stick with it and be rewarded

Thanks! Trying hard.

As for last night's progress, recalled absolutely nothing. Slept at 11:30 PM, awake 9 AM. Moving forward, practicing awareness to maximum of what I could do. For dream recalls, of course. Tonight will be the night.

Originally Posted by AquaBlitz11

Starting now as I've almost whole day today! Thanks for this book recommendation. It looks great.


Thanks! Trying hard.

As for last night's progress, recalled absolutely nothing. Slept at 11:30 PM, awake 9 AM. Moving forward, practicing awareness to maximum of what I could do. For dream recalls, of course. Tonight will be the night.

My personal recommendation with awareness is to start out slow. Begin with trying to recognize times that you've "zoned out" and gone on autopilot. Try to hold on to that "tuning back in" moment for a little bit, but gently, don't force it. Be happy when you "come back "to yourself and start paying attention again. Do not be frustrated when you lose attention/mindfulness, as it is normal. It's OK to have "maximum effort" days once in a while, but not all the time, you don't want to burn out. Generally, one of the key words in LD practice is "balance," finding the balance that works for you.

Originally Posted by fogelbise

Welcome to the DILD workbooks Aqua and be proud of your age! How many people your age have all of these interesting goals?!

Yes, really! You know who wants to cry? "Someone" (to remain unnamed me) discovering something as awesome as lucid dreaming only when he's in his late 40's. Oh, all the wasted years. You're the lucky one, you get to have a life full of amazing awesome dreams every single night. Just don't give up, keep building your skills consistently over time, spend some effort every day, and the rewards will be huge.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

My personal recommendation with awareness is to start out slow. Begin with trying to recognize times that you've "zoned out" and gone on autopilot. Try to hold on to that "tuning back in" moment for a little bit, but gently, don't force it. Be happy when you "come back "to yourself and start paying attention again. Do not be frustrated when you lose attention/mindfulness, as it is normal. It's OK to have "maximum effort" days once in a while, but not all the time, you don't want to burn out. Generally, one of the key words in LD practice is "balance," finding the balance that works for you.

Ah, yes. I'm trying to keep things balanced. They're usually down to the hill or just exceptionally high. Things are getting more balanced now. Thanks for your advice in this case also. Improvise!

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Yes, really! You know who wants to cry? "Someone" (to remain unnamed me) discovering something as awesome as lucid dreaming only when he's in his late 40's. Oh, all the wasted years. You're the lucky one, you get to have a life full of amazing awesome dreams every single night. Just don't give up, keep building your skills consistently over time, spend some effort every day, and the rewards will be huge.

Still, not a thing people around me would believe or such. Anyways, I'm glad I've my private adventurous journey. (This eventually becomes interesting point for my life. I've been living with boredom for long time already.)

Time to copy-paste the progress!

Originally Posted by AquaBlitz11

As for last night's progress, I can finally recall some dreams again after 2-3 days of low/no recalls. Also, I'm finally able to recall a dream before my natural awakening at 3 AM. Length is not too satisfying yet, but I believe this is great sign. Anything could be looked upon, here. (Sadly, I haven't made any uses of my physical dream journal since a dream before Fabricated World.) Gonna recall more tonight!

Originally Posted by AquaBlitz11

Ah, yes. I'm trying to keep things balanced. They're usually down to the hill or just exceptionally high. Things are getting more balanced now. Thanks for your advice in this case also. Improvise!


Still, not a thing people around me would believe or such. Anyways, I'm glad I've my private adventurous journey. (This eventually becomes interesting point for my life. I've been living with boredom for long time already.)

You're not alone! We dreamers need to stick together. DV is a great community, a place to share and make friends with the same interests. Believe us, we understand you about not being able to share with those around you . LD practice and dreaming is awesome!

Originally Posted by FryingMan

You're not alone! We dreamers need to stick together. DV is a great community, a place to share and make friends with the same interests. Believe us, we understand you about not being able to share with those around you . LD practice and dreaming is awesome!

That's why I'm glad I'm here.

Progress tracking. Each night, I can firmly say my dream recalls are getting better. At least, I'm quite glad with one long dream. For August 13th 2015 night, I recorded my dream here. As for practices, I'm quite worried with this one. To be honest, I don't feel into them much enough. I mean, I don't think I've been on my right track for lucidity. For reality checks, they were just when I remembered I should do it and it shouldn't interfere with my tasks. These happened to show out unsatisfying result; mindfulness and amount of RCs were lower than expected. I decided I should actually set up some stimuli to remind me of RC, matching my dream signs. This should be better way than using my own thoughts and get some "busy" excuses to not RC. They're also improving my prospective memory at same time. Let's go for notification messages or result pages, eh? (They tend to show up in my dreams.) Will report here whenever anything gets better! I realize I just have to change my ways of practice. It just feel better with this as I can finally get myself out of excuses. Each step into lucidity.

August 13th 2015 night's dream journal.

Spoiler for Self-reminder for practices:

I guess I should actually update list of my practices right now. Just going to note here to remind myself of whatever I'm doing.

• Overall practice for LD
  
  • Practices for DILD
  • MILD before drifting off to sleep and whenever I can do it without anything interrupting at all
  • Dream journaling everyday
• Reality checks
  
  • Methods
    
    • Fingers counting
    • Palm checking
    • Time checking
    • Environment overview, thinking backward
  • When...
    
    • Certain things are notifying me (making a small 5-10 minutes delay between each though, 100 chat messages to RC means death!)
    • Something unexpected happens or something happens as expected without proper reason (ability to predict future, yay!)
    • I feel I should do it 'now'

This is great…making your own adjustments to find what works for you. Congratulations on your progress with recall as well!

As for current progress, didn't recall a decent one for last night. Slept at 11 PM. Woke up once at 3:54 AM, noticing some fragments in my head for two different dreams. Though, I completely forgot them when I checked the time. Couldn't help but continued sleeping. Woke up at 6:48 AM, only remembered a fragment where I was right at exam. Asked a friend some questions, stepped in the room and sit on 8th leftmost seat counting from the board. A column consisted 12 seats, unknown amount for columns. Somehow heard my mom calling me and I woke up from that, though my mom didn't even try to wake me up. Maybe I should just stop checking time and such while attempting to recall. Glad I can start feeling multiple dreams though.

Recalled one last night as noted on this dream journal. I start feeling changes of dream signs (if that's ever possible), from my usual techies to school life (many dreams nowadays suggest that). Got to do mantra repeats before sleeping as always, and drifted off. Dream featured pretty much everything I needed for reality checks, writings, clocks, places. I did check the time, but not as RC. Quite disappointing that I didn't acknowledge it. Anyways, let's go again for tonight! It's now a progress.

Originally Posted by AquaBlitz11

Recalled one last night [url=http://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/aquablitz11/august-15th-2015-procrastinate4life-69057/] I start feeling changes of dream signs (if that's ever possible)

Oh, yes. My dream signs cycle around all the time. I have a pretty large set, and they tend to appear/disappear in streaks.

Good to know. There comes another signs for me to check out whenever I see them! Didn't have too much luck last night as I had to sleep at 3:30 AM, got only 3 hours of sleep. (#Procrastinate4Life) Recalled nothing. For tonight, I'm staying in hotel at another place as of my school's camp. Let's see what this bed has to offer. Lucidity tonight!

August 17th 2015 night: Recalled nothing. Slept at 11 PM. Woke up at 2 AM, 4 AM, 7 AM.
August 18th 2015 night: Two dreams recognized. Woke up once at 5:30 AM. Remembered things. Was about to write down to journal then forgot about them, failed to recall them back again. Went back to bed, took me 10-20 minutes to fall asleep (for some reason). Another fragment showed my suspect for reality due to super weird situation that myself in dream wouldn't even accept. Woke up abruptly from my mom at 6:45 AM though.

It is great to see you making regular updates to your workbook and continuing your practices!

I agree with FryingMan. Dream signs can come in streaks and I have had some success noticing dream signs and becoming lucid by focusing on the few dream signs that had been showing up in the recent nights, when following this practice. Basically focusing on a few that are more likely to show up again that night instead of flooding my intentions with too many different dream signs. General dream signs can work when other practices are in place like setting intention right before sleep or at WBTB and visualization is especially powerful for many people.

August 19th-20th 2015 night - Recalled no dreams.

I managed to recall another dream this morning due to what I stumbled upon last night. Who knows? I might dreamt something similar to that for last night.

Overall, my dream recalls have dropped sharply. Still trying to keep it up. More awareness and questions among the days.

As for last night's practice, in case of MILD. I can feel my mantras I've been repeating over a month, really sinking in my subconscious right now. That actually pays off. Possible lucidity in this dream journal.

Originally Posted by AquaBlitz11

Although, there's a thing I'm not really sure about. There are always cases where I can't tell if it was just visualization I made up, or it was a lucid dream. Things mostly happen when I wake up in real life and decided to do something similarly to DEILD. I can still feel myself lying in bed with external senses co-operating, things are dark. Senses in my dream are weak, but still exist. If last night was just wild imagination, it would feel quite wasted. Anyways, since this one felt pretty different from other possible nights, unmistakable feeling, I should be able to call this a lucid dream.

Any cases, I'll just feel happy about it right now. Let tonight be another night of great progress!

August 22nd 2015 night - Slept at 11 pm. Woke up on 4:40 am with no dream recalls. Actually, I somehow forgot them right at moment I tried to recall after realizing I woke up (woke up few seconds before even realizing). 7.20 am with a dream recalled, playing game is now back on my dreams.
August 23rd 2015 night - Slept at 10:30 pm. Woke up on 4:30 am with no dream recalls, except some weird sound fragment and light feeling of flying. Took me half an hour to continue sleeping, woke up on 6:20 am with decent dream recalls. Back to our classroom thingy, I got an interesting question for theories and such. Couldn't remember it to real life or else it would have been great thing for me. Geez, if I could remember it.

Don't have time to write dream journals here right now. Will find time to, soon.

Originally Posted by AquaBlitz11

August 23rd 2015 night - Slept at 10:30 pm. Woke up on 4:30 am with no dream recalls, except some weird sound fragment and light feeling of flying. Took me half an hour to continue sleeping, woke up on 6:20 am with decent dream recalls. Back to our classroom thingy, I got an interesting question for theories and such. Couldn't remember it to real life or else it would have been great thing for me. Geez, if I could remember it.

Hi AquaBlitz! Do you mean that you came up with a question in your dream to ask here in the workbooks but forgot the question?

August 24th 2015 night - Recalled two dreams, thanks to natural awakenings.

Not at all. Parts of my dream. In case of progress tracking, recalled none for both nights. I slept at 2:30 AM for August 25th 2015 night (actually beginning of August 26th already, lol) and got no recalls at all. Last night, I slept at 10:45 PM and recalled none also. Due to works and such, I'd occasionally sleep late. My dream recalls tend to be destroyed with that. Is there anything I should try out for constant, or even better recall rate? It's all about hills and valleys.

I've also been interested in DEILD also. Should I try it out, as part of WILD attempts? I just can't resist the urge to open my eyes, get off my bed, check the time and write some recalled dreams down. I'm always afraid that I'd forget my dream, as it happened; thanks to what I noted before going back to bed though.

Overall, things are still going great. I just hope I'm not getting any big works to do soon. A short lucid dream earlier, after (almost) a month of attempts is pleasurable.

Dreaming does seem to come in hills and valleys. But you can absolutely increase your average recall: the main thing is to keep it important to you, resolve to recall dreams, and make a habit of reaching for dream recall every single time you wake up. Spend time going over the dreams you recall, and try to see if you can work backwards to remember more. Journal your dreams. By keeping this up over time, you will recall more and more.

And you have to find the sleep schedule that works best for you, and try to stick to it.

Sure, try DEILD. I personally find that it's very much an opportunistic technique, meaning it's not easy to "make it happen" coming out of a non-lucid dream, but if you can learn to keep yourself in a "dreamy" state of mind after waking up, you can maximize the chances of it happening. For coming out of a lucid dream, yes, you can absolutely practice DEILD successfully.