I started thinking about dryspells. My theory is that since the brain always helps us when we try to learn something new. So should it do when we LD. If you are trying to learn how to kick a ball the brain always makes you kick it a little different every time. Since you always do it a little different the brain can eventually find out how to kick a ball in the best way. In the beginning you can kick the ball way too far to the left or the right. But after a lot of training you can actually make the ball go into the goal. And before you know it you can kick the ball exactly where you want.
Also the brain needs time to sort trough all the information so it can figure out the best way to do something. But if you try too hard you can get bored, and thus you cannot concentrate entierly on what you are doing. So when you try to learn something new it’s good to take a rest for a few days every now and then. Also the learning curve is not linear. It goes up and down and sometimes it goes just straight. (up means learning, down means forgetting)
So a dryspell could be that one needs to take a rest, or maybe the brain is just missing the goal completely. This would mean that when the dryspell is over the brain should have learned something(hopefully). And this could mean that one might even have more LD’s after a dryspell, compared to before the dryspell.
Also you want longer LD’s and the brain tries to help with this too. In the beginning LD’s are usually short since we tend to get too exited. When we learn to control our excitement we can stay in our LD’s longer. This usually happens quite fast, since we are used to controlling our feelings IRL. But because we also want higher level LD’s our brains try to wake us up more but since the brain tend to try big swings in the beginning we either wake up or loose our lucidity or don’t get lucid all. When the brain finds out the optimum awareness level we can start having long high level LD’s.
sorry for the long post. And this is my own views on learning and lucidity, but taken from what I know about learning and lucidity.
I would like to have some feedback from people that have had a dryspell to see if the amount of LD’s or the lucidity level have increased after the dryspell.
I have also been thinking about writing a FAQ about WILD since the Big WILD topic is a little too big to read. And people seem to have a lot of questions about WILD. So if you think it’s a good idea I might write one and post it.
I’m having a dryspell right now but I hope to change all that since I am officially on break now. Hmm, I don’t think any of my “dryspell periods” ever ended with a lot of LDs. It’s like I slowly get back into LDing and then I have times where I have them all the time. I can’t figure out much what it is that causes a dryspell but I do agree that when I have one, I am always trying harder, which doesn’t help. It gets a bit depressing though when you keep going days without having one. “I need my LD fix!”
I believe Jarod has brought out some good points. I say this because according to Monks and Nuns who meditate regularly, they claim that every now and then they hit a dry spell which they call dryness. Why? No one knows because the brain is so mysterious, but after the dryspell is over they have far more intense meditation and spiritual sweetness. I see a paralell here to what Jarod is saying. Somehow and for some unknown reason the brain seems to store up input without one being aware of it . However this does not mean that because one is going through a dryspell that they can ease off on attempting to LD. It means that one should continue to strive even through the dryness and suddenly and joyously the LD’s will return numeroulsy and even more intense. I am basing this theory on the testimonies of the meditators.
This remind me - the brain apparently switches hemisphere dominance every hour for 20 minutes to sort out new information, and people act a little “stupider” during this.
Could this happen on a larger scale of days and weeks?
Really, that would explain why I feel smart sometimes and after a while it feels like I’m more stupid than usual. Maybe it could happen on a bigger scale. There’s a lot that we don’t know about the brain yet.
About dryspells, there’s probably alot of other reasons they happen besides what I wrote. It could be stress, loss of motivation, the brain has something more important to do, too little sleep and so on for ever into eternity… and beyond.
I know this is extremely late, but I came out of a dry spell and started remembering dreams in triplets every night. On the lucid part, I haven’t had one yet. This is good information.
Btw, I don’t remember meeting you before (shame on Rhewin since you are a mod), so it’s nice to hear from you. I really like where you’re going with this, especially about the WILD tutorial. I think a lot of new dreamers here could do with it.
and great post. I hadn’t thought about it like that, with the kicking a ball analogy. It makes a lot of sense to me.