Hi, everyone! To my great excitement and amazement, I had my first lucid experience over the weekend after about three weeks of working on it. I just wanted to come back and thank everyone who’s posted here – reading this forum has helped me and given me a lot of encouragement.
Because of that, I’d like to pass along some encouragement to those of you reading who might still be trying to have your first lucid experience (or your first one in a long time). Maybe by sharing the little details that were helpful to me, they might also be helpful to others.
I’ve already posted my first LD here if you want to read about it: [community.ld4all.com/t/the-big-my-first-ld-collection-part-vi/36837/49) (Edit: Thank you, moogle, for telling me the correct link address!)
That was only the very beginning of several hours of great experiences! I feel so fortunate and happy to have been able to do this. While thinking about what may have triggered this sudden breakthrough, I realized there were some interesting details about that night. Maybe these will help you, so here they are:
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I was unusually well rested. The night before, I’d gotten much more sleep than usual, going to bed early and waking up late, for a total of about 10-11 hours of sleep when I normally get about 7. I think this made it easier to concentrate on the night I became lucid.
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I was able to sleep in. A luxury, I know, but I had nowhere to be and no alarm set. That allowed me to feel no “clock pressure†when I woke in the middle of the night. I was able to relax and not worry about what time it was or how much sleep I was getting.
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My cat woke me at an unusual time. While I often get up at least once in the middle of the night to answer the call of nature and have a drink of water, these are at natural breaks in my sleep cycle. When my cat woke me, I must have been in the middle of REM and able to drop back into it. Of course, I’m not suggesting you get a cat! Probably doing the technique of setting a beeper or alarm for the right time in the night would work.
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I’d been working diligently for several weeks. I’ve been dedicated about writing in my DJ every night, even if it’s only to say “no dreams recalled†that night. I’ve been doing frequent reality checks (more on that below) and doing quite a bit of reading on lucid dreams, both in books and on this forum.
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My digital watch was a huge help. I bought a digital watch at a secondhand store so I could use it for reality checks. I originally only meant to check reality on it by looking at it more than once (since I already knew digital clocks act weird in my dreams), but as it turned out, this is the kind of watch that makes a sharp “beep†at each hour. This has been a great cue to RC and helps me do it frequently. I also keep it near my bed and during the few hours that night I was going in and out of dreams (and lucidity), I was aware of it beeping at 4 AM, 5 AM, and 6 AM. I think it kept helping me check back in and remember my mission.
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I went to bed hungry. This may or may not have had anything to do with becoming lucid, but I note it here because I thought it was interesting. I’d been suffering from some indigestion earlier in the day, so I skipped dinner and didn’t start feeling hungry again until around bedtime. At that point it seemed too late for a meal, so I just went to bed on an empty stomach. I’ve heard that during fasting over a period of days (as for a vision quest or other spiritual practice), dreams become especially vivid. It doesn’t seem likely that skipping one meal would make any difference, but… well, who knows? Something to consider for future personal experiments, maybe.
Well, thanks for reading! Those of you still trying – don’t give up! I know three weeks isn’t very long to try and some of you have been trying much longer, but I’d like you to know that I hadn’t seen any signs of progress before this happened. I was sometimes remembering my dreams and sometimes not. I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, but I just kept being patient. Then, all of a sudden, it happened! Maybe it will be like that for you, too.
If any of you have any thoughts/comments about what I’ve written or if it ends up helping you, I’d love to hear about it.