How did YOU learn to LD? - Part II

Haha tyty
I actually tried to do WBTB today, but didnt know you had to stay awake for 15min or so, will def try your suggestions

Good luck and don’t give up :content:

A girl was presenting a research project in high school on the subject of dreams. I immediately went home and preformed a google search and found this site along with LaBerge reading material. This was around 2000 I think. I had a good routine going on and off for a few years with great results. Unfortunately life got in the way and my interest waned so here I am again starting from scratch to assist with my dhamma practice. I’m extremely rusty but on the upside I’ve clocked thousands of hours of meditation since then so I’m eager to see how much it helps with lucid dreaming. :flower:

Cool, I would love to hear how you get on, and if you notice a significant advantage in LD training with your acquired mental skills from meditation. I have a firm belief that meditation can help tremendously in LDing! Even just the from the occasions where I fall out of meditation, I notice my LDing start to slide as well.

Well just had my first LD since being back on my third night of practice. I believe that’s my record after taking a long break (it’s been about a decade since I last kept a dream journal). I had one the very first night I read about lucid dreaming when I was 14 or 15 but that was probably beginner’s luck so I don’t count it. Also part of the reason I came back was I developed the ability to achieve WILD during my normal daytime meditations about a month ago. I always wanted to do that when I was a kid and never was able to without cheating (WBTB, going 24 hours without sleep, etc.) Unfortunately as I told moogle, I need my meditation sessions for meditation but it motivated me to get back in the habit with some old fashioned MILD and go for that 7-8 hours lucid goal (which I never achieved). Anyways, so far so good! I can’t tell if the meditation is responsible but normally it used to take me a good week to two weeks of recording dreams before I saw results.

I originally learned to lucid dream from following some youtube videos. I think it may have been Reece69? And some of GizEdwards videos. From watching so much lucid dreaming info I eventually started to notice dreamsigns and quite a few times of spontaneous lucidity. From there I have just absorbed as much info as I could :smile:

Astral Projection

And when I was studying abroad. Being there for a week I dreamt twice about being back home. The third day I said to myself, if I dream I’m back home again, this is defo a dream. And then I went lucid that night (even after having had a couple of drinks).
The following LDs often came after experiencing something that ‘couldn’t be true’ in RL.

I learned it by accident while i was very young.
Been working on techniques for my whole life, but specificaly on astral projections, because they are more powerful and yet same thing as lucid dreaming.

its interesting to read about how everyone learned to LD!

i was originally counseled to learn because i suffer from chronic nightmares, and i eventually did some research and found they could be used for their own sake too. i like to take a proactive approach to dreaming :smile:

Happened to me multiple times spontaneously when I was a child. Didn’t know exactly what it was and always tried to wake up. I found out you can completely control your LD by searching my ‘‘condition’’ ~10 years ago when I was ~18 years old. I managed to increase the rate of LD’s by use of MILD and WBTB techniques and actively controlled ~10-20 them. I tried WILD many times, but somehow I can never fall asleep when staying conscious.

I’ve only had lucid dreams a handful of times but I’ve never been able to take control even though I’m aware that I’m dreaming. How do you learn to control things?

Also, I’ve been trying to perfect my sleep patterns and found a sleep calculator(https://startsleeping.org/sleep-calculator/) that includes age, which none of the other ones seem to have. Apparently that’s the biggest determining factor. Is that true?

Only thing limiting you in lucid dreams is you. If you think some action requires effort or might fail, it most likely will. Confidence is key. Remind yourself that nothing around you is real. Locked doors can be walked through, because they are not really there.

And about sleep timings. Those vary from person to person. Best way to learn what works for you is to just test different timings.

I had learned about lucid dreaming maybe a year before this actually happened, but I could never seem to get myself to do it by myself. I almost achieved it one time by looking at a digital clock and noticing that the time was really off with how it looked outside, but I freaked out too much and woke up.

When I actually, fully attained a lucid dream and could control it, I was helped by a reoccurring dream character (read about them in my dream journal, link in siggy). I was with him in the kitchen of my old house and we were about to leave, but these older people came in through the back door, who I realized were his grandparents but they were supposed to be dead. I started freaking out and my dream character turned me to him and told me I was dreaming! I had to take control of it because I was dreaming! And so I became lucid, and I was able to take us to a safer place.

That’s the low detail version anyway, but still, it was pretty wild.
I wasn’t able to have consistent lucid dreams after that, until recently.
Believe it or not, I performed a ritual back in January, and since then my lucid dreams have been pretty abundant, although I do find I kind of have to ‘renew’ the ritual, and do it at least once or twice a month. Totally worth it, though. I’ve definitely gotten better at lucid dreaming since then, and I think I’ll be able to have them soon, without the help of a ritual.

I agree! its very interesting to read all your stories^^

for me…ive been trying for YEARS but I think im blocking myself? its very hard to get lucid but I feel like mentally im standing in the way of…myself? haha if that makes sense

actually until last year I lived in a very broken home which was…idk it felt like a mental hospital, it felt like i was actually trapped in a nightmare. i cant even remember how but i stumbled over the author Charlie Morley and I think bc of him I got into lucid dreaming…also reading through your stories…I noticed something. Usually I can never remember what other dream characters told me or I feel liek i rarely talk to them. I never learned form my family or anyone to have “normal” conversations and I find it hard to communicate so I thought I could do this in lucid dreams…also, I wanted to perform on stage as a singer and guitarist in my lucid dreams and get over my anxiety…I do so at home in waking state but I really want to have my idol sing with me in my dreams…so far I couldnt accomplish that - I dont really know what I can do to improve my skills:/
Still, I wont give up! I even try to convince friends to try it, because its an incredible feeling and you could discover so many hidden things if you just dare to take a look! Right?

first time lucided by youtube video guide, than learnt Mihail Raduga’s course

I all of a sudden started havi g lucid dreams while in prison for my last 6 months. It was all of a sudden. Really quick i realized i could control my dreams and it was my excape and was very exciting. It was my way to excape. But then the day i got out it stopped and i could not do it no more. I dont understand y. There was a port on the wall ubove my head for satellite radio maybe that caused the dreams. I really dont know y or how i had em but at the time i was in very much contro and looked forward to sleeping cause i always knew i would be having an exciting dream almost like a bad ass movie every night and after a few days i could control the dreams i would even wake up to go to the bathroom and go back to sleep and continue the dreams it was amazing. I want to be able to have lucid dreams again but dont know how i guess

It’s a funny story. For me, it seems to be that I learned to lucid dream thanks to the disbelief of my friends and family… Yeah, that works out… if it even makes sense… :confused:

A few years back, my dreams were perhaps lucid, but not very clear or vivid or immersive and it was probably because I didn’t care much for them. I also didn’t remember them regularly. But already back then, whenever I talked to friends or family about dreams, they had a hard time believing what I told them about my experience. Some friends even just thought I was lying. But rather than trying to convince them - what’s the point, anyway? - instead, thanks to that, I directed more attention towards my dreams. And it seems that over time, they have become true lucid dreams, very vivid, with me leading great adventures while asleep. It was gradual and I didn’t notice it at first, I only became really aware of this change just now when I joined LD4all! So yeah, I think it was a bit of everything that had such a huge impact on my dreams in the last few years, but I definitely enjoy the way it has turned out now.

I started being interested about lucid dreams after having vivid hallusinations a child, they were like nightmares that occurred even when I was awake. I never knew how to describe the ‘realness’ of my dreams and when I grew up, I stumbled upon the works of Carl Jung who described dreams as our subconscious mind communicating to our consiousness. It was from there that I grew more and more interested in the phenomena as well as its implications for psychological wellbeing.

hello my name is Jay I’ve never gave 2 thoughts to any dream I had but lately and I may be wrong but I feel like I have been having lucid dreams I will share them hoping maybe someone can give me advice or let me know whats going on