Learn lucid dreaming

I think my safest bet is to start my dream journal again. Being conscious and aware of my dreamtime helps build towards lucidity. It kinda started happening spontaneously a couple of years ago when I was paying more attention to my dreams, so I don’s see why it can’t happen again. I’ll keep you posted!

Guess I’ll start with a dream journal.

From Waking Life:
So what was going on in your dream?

Oh, a lot of people, a lot of talking. You know, some of it was kind of absurdist, like from a strange movie or something. Mostly it was just people going off about whatever, really intensely. I woke up wondering where did all this stuff come from?

You can control that you know.

Do you have these dreams all the time?

Hell, yeah. I’m always going to make the best of it. But the trick is, you got to realize that you’re dreaming in the first place. You got to be able to recognize it. You got to be able to ask yourself, “Hey man, is this a dream?” See, most people never ask themselves that when they’re awake, or especially when they’re asleep. Seems like everyone’s sleep-walking through their waking state, or wake-walking through their dreams. Either way, they’re not going to get much out of it.

I can already kind of do this. Be conscious I’m dreaming and control what is going on. Sometimes even going back to it after waking up. But I want to be able to have it happen more because I always feel more energised in the morning after it.

I often used to have semi-lucid dreams, where I would know I was dreaming, but wouldn’t try to control the dream (mainly beacuse I didn’t know it was possible). Since reading about lucid dreams, however, these seem to have stopped, but I’m trying to bring them back so I can experience full lucidity.

A few tips:

http://www.wikihow.com/Lucid-Dream

And apparently, eating cheese before bed helps induce dreams in general. Might want to research that one yourself, I haven’t looked into it much. Could just be an age-old myth like it sounds, but I’ve been told it causes your stomach to start working or something, which…ehh, not so sure.

I’ve only been in control of my dreams twice (only counting those instances that lasted for more than a few seconds). I can’t say I was necessarily “practising” lucid dreaming fully at the time either, but I knew it was possible.
Though I might not have experienced much lucidity in actual dreams yet, I have had many a “hypnagogic hallucination” and been trapped in “sleep paralysis” on many occasions (which doesn’t scare me so much anymore).

Here’s a link on lucid dreaming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream#Wake-initiation_of_lucid_dreams_.28WILD.29

And if you experience the hypnagogic hallucinations and sleep paralysis, here’s an interesting fictional interpretation (folklore):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_%28folklore%29

There are devices you can buy that apparenty aid in keeping you aware well asleep (a blindfold you wear, that blinks before your eyes as you sleep). I’ve thought about it…but, meh…I’d imagine you could pick this skill up eventually.

It seems like quite the experience; imagine being able to do it each time you sleep? I wonder if you’d become mentally exhausted after a while…

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oneironaut

it’s cool, but it can also be scary at times

I have totally lost the miniscule bit of power that I had over my dreams, I’ve been reduced to just getting swept away by the dream. I guess I’ll just have to start over from scratch.

I am right on the edge of having this work for me, sometimes it happes, but only for a second and then I accidently let it run wild and I cant do anything to remember i’m dreaming. I have 5 days left till the challenge kicks in, so I think that I can do itl