Conclusion

Tags

dreaming, dreams, Lucid, oneironaut

So it’s been a long and busy first year of actual lucid dreaming training and practice, and as this diary comes to an end, I don’t have anything to add but the summary of my findings, in a hope that it may actually help someone out there become lucid, or at least avoid some of the pitfalls and mistakes that I have made along the way.

365 days, probably around 1000 or so dreams and with about 10 real lucid dreams, controlled and aware. That’s 1%, which when you think about it isn’t really that bad, considering the amount or work and effort and brainpower that goes into these things, and considering that I know full well I wasn’t entirely focussed for large parts of the year. If I include all the times I woke myself up or any other near lucid or lucid but uncontrolled and aware, then I can bump the number up to around 2-3%. Already much better, right? So with a little more brainpower and focus I would reach that for fully aware dreams.

Now if I take into account all of the unnoticed dream signs, that really for a full oneironaut shouldn’t go unnoticed, and I’m talking about the really obvious dream signs that show up time and again, school and treacle-running etc., as well as the little things that are out of pace and should have been picked up on, then I would imagine it would be probably in the region of 50%. That’s how common my dream signs turned out to be. Half of my dreams should have been lucid, 500 lucid and fully explorable dreams every year. That’s incredible.

Obviously that is absolutely best case scenario for me, and everyone is different, that’s when noticing every dream-sign and lucid marker or signpost, which frankly, I don’t think will ever happen for me or for many people at all. But it gives a sense of just how easy this should be, if the mind was in the right focus and looking out for these things constantly. Which it should be, that’s what the training and general awareness and daily meditations and mantras before bed and during the day, are for. They are helpers, reminders to notice these things, so the lucid dreaming is achieved regularly.

Things I found out, and things that will help me continue my training as an oneironaut, are to keep my mind focussed. This is the most important one, and also the most difficult. There are so many other things that are going on in the day, not just distractions like TV or internet, but real things, conversations with people, work, life in general. These make if very difficult to be aware all the time, and something that I found personally a struggle to fight against.

But I also found that mantras and meditation at night, just before sleep, really increased my chances, of at least having a good dreaming night, if not a full lucid. But you will find it very difficult to have a lucid without a good dreaming night, I have found. The single most successful way I came across to have lucid dreams was the Wake Back To Bed technique, involving waking up your brain during the night, whether naturally while you lay there, or actually getting out of bed for half and hour, then sleeping again. I had most of my lucid when doing this accidentally, because I couldn’t get back to sleep quickly enough for my brain to still be asleep.

I wanted to keep this conclusion brief, so I won’t say much more. Only I shall reiterate something that I have said a few times throughout the diary, lucid dreaming isn’t a hobby you can pick up and cast aside a month at a time, it requires constant work and training and focus, and all that good stuff. There are a few exceptions and natural lucid dreamers (how I envy them) but for most of us this is a very long and determined process. You will miss out on sleep, there isn’t really a way around that, so if you don’t sleep too well to begin with, I didn’t when I first learnt of it, then perhaps lucid dreaming isn’t right for you just yet. However, don’t give it up, the training for lucid dreaming and better sleep absolutely go hand in hand. If you practice your lucid dreaming techniques and meditation, I can almost guarantee that you will be sleeping better very soon, and ready to have good dreams and become lucid.

But even then, be prepared to lose sleep, whether through a technique, or waking up to write down your dreams. I wonder how much sleep I lost over this year?

Totally worth it.

Saturday 18th January*

Tags

Awareness, chase, Detailed, film, film-dream, old friends, Reality Check, school, unnoticed dream sign

• In bed – 10.37pm
• Lights off – 12.16am
• Woke up – 9.12am

For the final day of this journal I caught up with my best friend, who I haven’t seen in two years. Dream prep was pretty good and awareness was as well. In-bed, I tried to really force the mantras, but fell asleep pretty swiftly due to tiredness not focus.

Dreams
7.24am – Ben Stiller was a weapons manufacturer or distributor or something and people were trying to blackmail him or force him into giving them weapons. His son and son’s girlfriend were being trapped somewhere and were waiting for rescue. The baddies who were holding them captive were a group of Christian Germans, who read a dishwasher instruction manual as scripture. Sin was wrong, so if the manual was wrong, it was Sin. But it wasn’t, so they continued.
8.25am – I was in high school and getting quite lost. I has spent the day looking for items that my girlfriend’s boss needed for something. He was on the other end of the phone line and I left him there while I went and searched. But I got distracted pretty easily. On the dinning hall there was a really tall girl who was nearly breaking her boyfriends back by bending him over a railing, because he had kissed another girl at some point. This captured most of my attention.
9.12am – Back in school again. This time there was a very fancy food van outside that served hundreds of types of bread, even shop bought packets. It was run  by a very drunk woman, who had been drinking all morning. She was so drunk that she tried to drink by tipping the glass over her nose and top lip rather than her mouth. It was very funny. There were conversations with her about vegetarianism, but I don’t recall the details of this, and how eating four meals of a hundred calories in the day is the best options for people… she changed her mind quickly once I realised that this was ridiculous. Walking away I looked at the time on my phone; 18.15, but knew something was wrong, (not really paying attention to the fact that my phone looked like a watch). But I checked the main school clock tower and saw the actual time was just after 1 in the afternoon. I thought nothing of the disparity apart from my phone being wrong somehow.

So the final night of the journal ended pretty well. There was no lucid of hinting at lucidity, but the dreams were decent, even if I had to force myself to recall them quite a bit. There were a few hints at things I should have noticed, but I guess it wasn’t to be.

Friday 17th January

Tags

chase, driving, film-dream, games, unnoticed dream sign

• In bed – 11.35pm
• Lights off – 12.47am
• Woke up – 8.00am

Today was a work and game day. My dream prep I think was actually pretty good and in-bed was good too. I think my in-bed is more geared towards general dreamy thinking at the moment rather than specific mantras and meditation, at least that’s what I’m coming to think. I need to add more actual mantras, something which I tried to remedy this night.

Dreams
6.42am – This dream I’m sure was much longer than I recall but I remember it was a GTA style game dream, and I had just started a car chase and gotten 4 stars of wanted level. The police were crazy. I ended up crashing into a large rock pool, where a shark lived, and I managed to hold its nose hard enough to stop it from biting me.

So it’s not as I’d hoped for the last few days, a penultimate night lucid would have been nice. Maybe my preparation in the days isn’t actually as good as I think it is, perhaps I could have been doing more; focussing more and making more active effort to achieve lucidity during the night. But there is a fine line between becoming lucid and becoming a zombie for the rest of the day because of lost sleep. One last try though.

Thursday 16th January

Tags

Awareness, Detailed, film-dream, forgotten, games, girlfriend, time-travel, unnoticed dream sign

• In bed – 10.44pm
• Lights off – 12.41am
• Woke up – 9.00am

A drive back to my girlfriend’s parent’s house for the weekend. I actually did pretty good awareness and dream prep , in general much better than recently I think. In-bed was really good as well too, though I fell asleep pretty quickly I think.

Dreams
7.12am – This one started out in one of my iPad games that I play I think, but it was very much different. There was a bulk coin trade going down with a world famous trader, a black market deal. There was so much more to this one that I just couldn’t recall when I woke, but it was really long section of this really long dream. Next part up was someone telling us that they had double booked themselves for my girlfriend’s and my wedding. They were very apologetic, but the ballet would make them late, said by  a large rugby player that I know as well. The final part of this dream was a time travel piece. A few of us were having a kind of tour through a sprawling building, following a guy who I think was trying to distract us from something his gang were doing. Perhaps some kind of robbery, or something to do with the next part. We wandered through various rooms, coming outside eventually and finding our way to a beach. But we realised we were a day or so in the past. Quickly we decided to do what we needed, to steal and stock up on stuff, because in a few hours 99% of the population were about to he killed by something. We would survive with our head start.

I had two other really lengthy and detailed dreams after this one as well, but I couldn’t quite recall them. I’m surprised I got this one in so much detail as well, as I fell asleep during recall. So a great night, let’s hope this continues.

Wednesday 15th January

Tags

Awareness, chase, Detailed, old house, sport, unnoticed dream sign, vivid

• In bed – 9.52pm
• Lights off – 11.39pm
• Woke up – 8.30am

Today was spent doing stuff around town and working and playing games. Dream prep was good, and in-bed was as well. Though I’m still hoping for a couple more spectacular days of awareness before the finish.

Dreams
7.41am – I was at some school or academy, training for a big race that we were entering. I think it was a flying race, except there were no vehicles involved, just simple superman style flying. We had to take trips around the courses to learn it and get to know the other contestants to see which ones we wanted to team up with. A few races before the big final, an amateur or unknown racer started winning really well, and it threw everything off. All the favourites were out of line then. And when the final race did come around everyone boycotted it so we could help one girl who was arguing with some religion or other, who said that the end of the world was going to happen in a few hours.
8.30am – This one was almost as though it followed on form the last one, though it was completely different. Very odd, I thought. I was in my dad’s old house in America, and we were all going to an aquarium to see a killer whale, which was also a dragon of course. It blew bubbles of fire in the water and made a perfect bubble that looked like a mirror. There was a boy walking along the bottom of the tank as well, as though he were breathing air. This dream was quite a bit more like my hyper realistic ones, the textures of the whale and bubbles, the sound he made, the boys hair waving in the water, even though he was kind of standing in air. It wasn’t quite as realistic as some of the others I have had, it doesn’t quite seem as though it is an ingrained memory that I have actually experienced but it’s not far off I don’t think.

Tuesday 14th January

Tags

driving, family, forgotten, unnoticed dream sign

• In bed – 10.29pm
• Lights off – 11.47pm
• Woke up – 8.32am

Today was a work day, lots of writing and work done on this blog. So that was good for dream prep and awareness was pretty good as well. In-bed was good too. All good here.

Dreams
4.40am – There was some kind of street racing going on. My notes are quite badly written, criss-crossing over each other but at some point there was a group of girls that I came across, they, for some reason, started attacking me. I think they were just messing around, but it wasn’t very fun for me, when they stuck freshly burning cigarette ash up my nose. The buggers. Next I vaguely recalled some kind of monster scene, like an old school Godzilla or something, trashing a cityscape.
8.32am – I was coming home from a holiday. My sister and her kids were there as well. We were waiting to drive onto a ferry, heading away from Jersey. I have never been to Jersey, or thought about going, but I was there nonetheless. I don’t really recall the details of this dream, but the basics are there at least.

Not a great night for dreams, but better than nothing I suppose. In-bed will be spectacular tomorrow, and I may try and stay up in the night for a WBTB attempt. Will see how that goes.

Monday 13th January*

Tags

Awareness, day-bleeding, film, food, forgotten, naked, old friends, school, unnoticed dream sign

• In bed – 9.42pm
• Lights off – 12.47am
• Woke up – 9.03am

Today was a day with a little work, bits around town and quite a bit of game playing. Dream prep and general awareness were pretty ok though, and in-bed was really good as is the norm.

Dreams
8.32am – This was the last day of a holiday or a trip somewhere and was spent in a house with a group of who I assume were fellow holiday makers I was staying with. Two girls were pulling down their tops a little bit and flaunting their cleavage and another kept on hugging me. There was also poker game going on with some of the guys.  Quick change and the holiday was over, I was at a job, trying to stick a tax disc on the windscreen of a car and really struggling with it. Then to make my day even worse I got shouted at by the boss because I couldn’t park the car very well while reversing.
9.03am – This one kept switching between me and a Korean kid. He was setting up a business deal, aged around ten, but he told his very strict father that he was just speaking with his sister. He was in school and getting quite worried that he was going to be found out and given a red number stamped on his shirt, pointing him out as a bad kid. Next I was hungry, so I went up to the doctors office to get breakfast, a bagel (my usual breakfast as it happens). A woman followed me because she was scared that I was going to commit suicide. However she walked in at the wrong time, and the doctor was telling me all about various poisons, quite innocently I might add.

Sunday 12th January

Tags

film-dream, forgotten, games, inept at sport, old friends, school, science, sport, unnoticed dream sign

• In bed – 9.52pm
• Lights off – 11.57pm
• Woke up – 8.00am

A day of lots of work a, actually setting up this blog that you have been reading. Dream prep was pretty good and in-bed was good too.

Dreams
4.05am – There was a group of scientists who made a bet over something. It was in my old high school, except it was, and everyone in it was, unbelievably rich. This had a bearing on the bet made but I don’t’ recall any of the details for it. There was a part, like a TV show and when one of the main characters entered a room and needed to sit down, an ‘extra’ vacated their seat for them. Next up there was a new and very popular kid in school who was invited to play a video game version of basketball… but he sucked at it, just like me. Next I took over and was in goal, taunting a girl saying that she wasn’t good enough to score six goals past me. She got quite angry with me and I felt pretty bad.
8.00am – I was in school again, running a drugs or body enhancement/upgrade business. But I was playing everyone, because I had sold many people the same product. I was fleeing from them while trying to figure out a plan.

Between these two dream I had one more really good and detailed dream, not a lucid or related I didn’t think, but like a fool I fell asleep while trying to recall the details. Ah well, good dreams had tonight even so.

Saturday 11th January

Tags

bad night, fail, forgotten, inept at sport, Moving house, old friends, school, sport, unnoticed dream sign

• In bed – 10.04pm
• Lights off – 12.00am
• Woke up – 8.13am

Today was much like all days recently, a bunch of work and writing followed by games and relaxing. General awareness wasn’t too bad, still after all of this time, I’ve only managed a handful of brilliant days though. In-bed wasn’t good at all, I feel, I don’t actually remember though.

Dreams
7.17am – I don’t recall this one, but realised I hadn’t jotted any notes previously, so forced something from my recall. A guy was selling his kid. That’s all I have, but I vaguely recall the scene of a posh hotel and a deal over champagne with a couple of rich people, but that’s about it.
8.13am – This was a little more detailed thankfully. It was the last day of school or a job or something, and a group of us were heading back in the early evening to go for some assessment or other. I spoke to an old friend on the way about when we should begin moving our stuff to the new house, then I darted after a yellow cricket ball that had been hit across the fields. I threw it back and the next time it came over I missed the catch and it hit me painfully in the chest. Our group had moved into the field now as well, and were huddled in a circle because they were kicking a football around. I kicked it from a long way away and nearly hit a couple of disabled kids that were apparently being looked after by some of our group.
I’m not quite sure what happened here. It might be that I didn’t do any med and mantras in-bed, it hope it is, or just a temporary lapse in having any actual dreams. Either way this last week will be packed with dream prep and awareness.

Friday 10th January*!

Tags

bad night, dream journal while in dream, fail, forgotten

• In bed – 9.32pm
• Lights off – 12.12am
• Woke up – 8.13am

A day spent working, writing and playing today. My dream prep wasn’t as good as I had hoped it might be, but that’s ok. In-bed was decent though.

Dreams

I did have a couple of dreams tonight at least, and I was very sure that I had written something down on paper, but I guess not. Either my pen failed or I dreamt that I was writing in my journal. As such I don’t recall them now, even if they were quite clear at the time. So I guess this night, on paper, goes down as another fail. I haven’t had too many of them, right?